See'rs, Be-ers, Knowers and Doers
See'rs, Be-ers, Knowers and Doers
How Listening to Animals as Messengers and Watching for Patterns can be Incredibly Important
I spoke with Sarah on May 29, 2020 and we had a wonderful conversation about how intuition has shown up in her life through the animals that cross her path as well as noticing the patterns and events and then analysing the timing and the whole picture to see where it leads her. Her life has had a variety of experiences good and bad like the rest of us and paying attention to her surroundings including the messengers that show up has made a huge difference.
Bio
Sarah Schlote, MA, RP, CCC, SEP
Sarah is a Registered Psychotherapist, Canadian Certified Counsellor, Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, and founder of The Refuge: Centre for Healing and Recovery in Guelph, an integrative facility focusing on top-down and bottom-up trauma and attachment treatment approaches. She holds a trauma-focused Masters in Counselling Psychology and has also completed additional training in EMDR, Structural Dissociation Theory for ego state and parts work, Body Memory Recall, the Touch Skills Training for Trauma Therapists, the Somatic Resilience and Regulation – Early Trauma Training (attachment rupture and repair), and trauma-focused equine-facilitated therapy and ecotherapy. She also weaves mindfulness and DBT-inspired skills as well as psychodynamic therapy, attachment-oriented psychotherapy, Gestalt therapy, animal-assisted therapy, and Indigenous principles into her work. She has also been involved in the field of animal-assisted interventions since 2003, including the development of standards of practice, and is the creator of EQUUSOMA™, a training model incorporating Somatic Experiencing®, attachment theory, polyvagal theory and equine-assisted practice. Fluent in English and French, she is a sought-after trainer and frequently delivers trainings and workshops throughout the province and Canada on trauma-informed care and treatment. For more information, please visit www.sarahschlote.com, www.equusoma.com.
Welcome to Se-ers Be-ers, Knowers, and Doers, a podcast about intuition. Do you know what that is? Intuition to me, is that inner sense of knowing that something is true and yet I have no proof, but there's so many definitions and there's so many ways i t can come and I'm looking t o bring together and share with you some amazing guests, you have some amazing life stories and also some insights into how intuition can come and I'm looking to gather those crows in the trees. I hope you're one of them. I hope that this podcast inspires you to be more connected to your intuition. And I hope that by doing that, we make the world a better place. Thanks for coming on this journey with me. Before we get started today, I would love to share some tools with you to help with stress and feeling overwhelmed, especially for the energetically sensitive person. Feel free to go to my store on my website a t www.Healingvitality.ca. Thanks so much for coming on this journey with me. So I'm super excited today. And I think I say that every podcast, but I really am today. C ause I feel like I found a soul sister in some a nyways. So I am so grateful that you said yes to joining me today. S arah, my guest today is Sarah Schlote.
Sarah:Thank you.Hi Heather. Hi Heather.
Heather:So I'd like to start off with, please tell us a little bit about yourself and we'll share you with the world.
Sarah:Fantastic. So I am a bit of a mixed bag. I like to describe myself as this really weird. Some people have called me as then spark blog. Some people, yeah, some people have talked about how I'm this really interesting mix of being very scientifically minded while at the same time, having a very strong, intuitive side. And I like to think of myself as a really complex individual with a lot of authenticity to bring. And if I had to describe myself, I think those would probably be the best ways to describe who I am as a, as a person in a nutshell. But then there's of course what I'm known for. And that would be perhaps more on the professional realm, which is I'm a registered psychotherapist in private practice. And I have been focusing my practice for many years now on working with trauma in many, many forms, probably in the broadest definition possible. You could imagine for the word trauma, and specializing in many of the more cutting edge, trauma therapies that are out there today. And I have also been working on a sideline, which has quickly mushroomed into being a very big and prominent part of my world, which is equisoma, which basically for Equis, which is horse and Soma, which is the body and this idea that we can look at the relationship between horses and humans in terms of trauma and how to, how does human trauma and horse trauma, how do those two things intersect and it's on each other and it's, how do we heal together? Like if we're injured in relationship together, how do we heal together? And so Equisoma, uh, in large part has the name because it draws from a particular modality. I've trained is called somatic experiencing. And that is a whole other story in and of itself. But that's largely my professional world is a trauma therapist, trauma trainer, and a horse person.
Heather:So were you always a horse person?
Sarah:Yeah. No. And that's, what's so interesting. I did not grow up with horses. I always live rural, my family most by pretty much until age 18, from birth to 18, we lived on various federal properties from sort of the metal Laurentian mountains in Western Quebec to the country roads in Eastern Ontario and where we grew up. There were a lot of farm properties around, but my family is not a horsey family. And uh, when I was a child, interestingly, I discovered this after I grew up, one of the properties we lived on when I was a young person was actually a little mini sort of wee one acre horse property that I didn't know was horse property until my parents told me when I was in my thirties. And it was funny because I always loved that property. Like it was very, very deep at 500 feet deep and which is why it was a responsibility. And so partway along the backyard and there was a long fence and on the other side of the fence was a Creek and that North, like a little Apple tree and a bunch of trees and a shed where we piled wood, which I later came to understand was a run a shelter and I didn't know that at the time. And so I feel like my whole life I've been, you know, aching to get back to a farm. And as a teenager, my best friend was a horsey person and yeah, and she got me into horses and Walter Farley books, you know, Black Stallion, So I read those, uh, you know, religiously. And then she got me into the band at river movies, which I also watched like a feed and then kind of fell out of horses for a bit. And as a grownup, as I moved into the therapy world, learned a lot more about animal assisted therapies. And when I moved to Vancouver Island to do my master's degree in counseling psychology really started to open up my horizons around horrses and healing and horsemanship and all this kind of stuff. And so it sort of blossomed out of there.
Heather:And how long ago was that?
Sarah:That would be about 14 years ago.
Heather:Oh, interesting. Yeah. Cool. There, I think there was shifts going on in the world 14 years ago because that's when I quit my corporate job and moved into naturopathy. So it's
Sarah:Oh, interesting. Okay.
Heather:Yeah. And other scenarios 14 years, 14, 15 years ago was when lots of cool stuff happened. I think. So you have taken a whole bunch of modalities and basically blended them into your own melting pot that you offer your clientele.
Sarah:Yeah. It's been really fun. I think there's a, cause I know you're so focused on intuition and I want to respect sort of the seed for your podcast. And so when I think about all these modalities that I've been drawn to, I think there's a certain inner knowing around, okay. You know, like when you land in, in the, in an area of practice, there's something that shifts inside where you go, yes, this is, this is the thing it's like Peter Levine who created somatic experiencing, he will talk about the body speaking in an unspoken voice. And I kind of like that languaging, cause it certainly feels like that for me, where there's this process that happens in me when I get connected to something that feels right and, and there's different body sensations that happen. There's like an expansion in my chest and you know, a sense of peace or aliveness that comes. And, you know, and depending on the moment that it's hinged with different kinds of feelings and one thing that happens a lot for me when I know I'm on the right track is I'll get goosebumps and the shiver that goes down on my right leg from my hip to my ankle and it's the same, same sensation. And it has been that sensation since I was a kid. So it's really interesting, you know, so these modalities that I chosen to train and as a therapist, have all fed into each other and have all kind of come to me as a result of this intuitive sort of sense. Even if the modalities are all highly scientifically based, I came to them as a result of trusting my felt sense about them.
Heather:Wonderful. I giggled when you say goosebumps because I have goosebumps when stuff like that happen, so it's fun. Yeah. The body is an amazing mechanism and how it's, I've never actually researched how intuition can turn on the nervous system to create feelings. Like, I don't know if that is a thing or not, but it's funny because when people feel things like that, it's like, how does that generated? You can't say that it isn't true. Right? Yeah. Fantastic. So in working with the horses, do you have your own horses?
Sarah:Yeah, we have two. And when we do well, when I do sessions, the legals with the COVID sort of pandemic, we're not able to offer sessions currently. We're looking to start to reopen that. Um, but because my boarding facility, uh, I currently board, um, does not mean that there's some limitations around who could be there. And when, and insurance wise, you know, we're not allowed to bring offsite people into the pastures that really limits what I can do. And so I put her with a nearby stable, and we have access to, I think somewhere between six, seven, eight horses that we can engage with in a process for working with the clients. And so that's been really interesting, but that of course is part of this process is wanting to have my own farm for a very, very long time. Like I said earlier, I've been kind of trying to move in that direction since I feel like I left that property when I was like eight or nine. So currently I feel like I'm even closer to that dream half day in terms of looking at real estate and feeling that sense of expansion when I see a particular property go, I wonder if that's the one, you know, and then sitting with that and seeing what happens next and seeing what synchronicities show up and what starts to align. So my hope is, is that, cause my big dream has always been let's let's have my own farm, not just for clients to come and do intensives for healing work and to teach trauma therapy, but also to be a place for the horses to be. And when I do equine assisted therapy, it's a little bit of a paradigm shift. It's not just, Oh, the horses are there. So the humans can heal. It's a relational process whereby the healing for the human cannot come at the expense of the horse. And since horses also experienced their own trauma, it would really be hypocritical of me for the process to be solely about the human being. And so for me, it's about how do I set create a farm property where the horses can live and have a really wonderful natural life. And that the interactions with humans are not reenactment of past abusive or exploitative behavior. How can it be a place where both the human and the horse have a choice and a voice, and really just creating a space for that, where it's not about getting the client to experience something and the horse may or may not really want to be doing that. So for me, it's a very different sort of perspective, which is why I've kind of leaned towards the language. Of course human trauma recovery is it's not necessarily explicitly equine assisted therapy of some kind. I mean, technically this is also oddly enough horsesmanship and of course behavior and what are we doing to support conditions for healing across species.
Heather:Beautiful. Yeah. I love a balanced approach because I too love to work with the trauma that animals that have been put through based on human behavior. Yeah. So to hear you speak that way, it's like my body reacted for sure. So it's
Sarah:Notice in your body, Heather, when that happened. And I said that
Heather:It was a release of a relief. It was a release of relief is what happened in my body. I'm like, Oh, and then a giddy, giddy little girl inside going yay. Like my arms went up, like I was cheering a football team, somebody who gets it, you know, like thought that was the sequence of events in my body that occurred. So
Sarah:Lovely hearing you share that right now. Have a huge hearing. You share that.
Heather:Yeah. Well, it's that balanced approach that, you know, there's that mindset that we're all one and what we do to one we receive or goes on and then the cycle is through back to you. And, and yet to me, I've said this before on other podcasts, I think they're the more evolved species in my spiritual mindset. Cause they have figured out how to live together without codependence they've figured out how to use the earth without exploitation. I think if we can be more aware of our interactions with them and what they're constantly telling us and teaching us, we will move along our evolutionary train much faster. I think
Sarah:What's interesting is that for me, it's like we're animals too, you know, like we're technically right. We're mammals as well. And so for me it's like, is it a better return to our actual natural
Heather:Yeah. Actual nature. Yeah. It could be, you know, it's the ego piece that I w I wonder about cause they keep us humble, man. So I was just really excited and giddy when you shared your dream, it's really,
Sarah:It feels closer. It feels, it feels like the signs and the path is, is unfolding sort of fast and furious these days. So hopefully by the next time we chat, I'll have more news about that. Um, but in the meantime, I remember you, before we started recording today, you were asking if I could share some examples of how intuition shows up.
Heather:Yes. Yes. Because everybody's got different things that resonate and different ways to receive intuition. So how it shows up for you is great. And, and some stories of when you listen some stories, maybe when you didn't listen, anything along those that you feel comfortable sharing would be lovely.
Sarah:Gosh, I have so many stories. Where can I start? So perhaps the first thing I can say is that I haven't always thought I was an intuitive person, partly because of my early history and sort of how life and people in my life has sort of convinced me that there's something wrong with me. And, and I've this problematic individual and yada yada blah. And so as someone who has been scapegoated at Gaslite a fair amount in my life, um, I've come to distrust my own sense of knowing and basically spent, I would say I started doing therapy. I was about 23. So I would say up until even into my mid twenties, late twenties, I really doubted that I had anything worthwhile to offer or that I had any kind of wisdom because I had spent a lifetime in self protection mode. And what people saw me was this very needy, highly defensive, you know, highly verbally able to like defend myself with my tongue, so to speak, uh, and a very hardenned reactive kind of person. And I always really had a hard time with acknowledging that. And as I healed and did my work on years of therapy, so many different modalities, and as I've done that, and I continue to have a journey in that area. Like currently I'm working with a practitioner in the U S who uses sematic work to work on birth imprints and early pre and perinatal imprinting that happens in the body. And yeah, so fascinating stuff. So this is sort of my latest sort of unfolding or iteration on the, for years. I didn't know I had any of these abilities. And so over time as the layers of trauma and self protection were starting to shed away, I started to become more aware of certain gifts. I suppose you could say, I have, now it took me a while because I, I never really, you know, when people would talk with gifts, I was like, Oh, that's kind of woo. You know, and I'm really fine. See, I'm a very intellectual, smart person, you know, high IQ. And I would use that as a, both as a self protective mechanism and, you know, as a way to some ways keep people away. And that's all, again, defense strategy. But as I kind of realized that there was more to me than just having a high IQ, uh, there was like, Oh, there's these bits and pieces to me that I'm, I'm learning more about. And so one of those pieces is a really strong ability to notice patterns and notice synchronicities and picking up on when this happened on this day, this other thing was happening at the exact same time. And I just, you know, you discovered these little threads and, which I always call like these little guideposts. It's like, Oh, isn't that interesting? There's a little map. There's the universe kind of winking at you kind of thing. And I always had that gift. I think my mom has that as well. And that's been something I've always been very good at is recognizing, Oh, when I'm on the right track, I can tell because I'm able to pick up on all these nuances and they all string together. And it's, it's just like, you couldn't make it up if you tried. Like, it was just so like somebody wrote it in a fiction, like it's so perfect. And how the little metaphors line up, uh, I have dreams. One of the things that I have a lot of what I call barometer dreams and these, I started having, uh, around age 23 when I started doing therapy and for what I call a barometer dream are these dreams that are full chuck full of metaphor. And I really have a lot of use at identifying and figuring out my own dreams, cause my dreams usually reflect what's going on. And like an example of this is, um, so I had a series of dreams, uh, in my early twenties, whenever I started therapy that I started having dreams of fish tank and the fish tank dreams really came fast and furious for a number of years. Um, while I was in therapy and the dream always had a different metaphor. Like the one dream, the fish tank was overflowing and the fish in it was too big and had to get out in another dream. I was having difficulty finding fish for the fifth day and other another dream. I was in a weird abandoned pet store with piles upon piles of empty tanks that were dirty and needed to be cleaned. And I I'll never forget the moment where I had noticed a big shift in my life at that time. The shift now is lost to the sands of time. I forget what it was, but the dream still remains. And the dream was, I crashed out of a tiny tank and freshwater spilled everywhere. And I became this fish in a larger tank. And that, as I say this to you today, I realized it was part of my birth of current because I have a life pattern of being cramped and being in places or life pots, the flowerpots in my life that are too small for me and needing to get out and get out quickly. My mom told me recently I was born in under three hours. I'm like, well, that certainly explains a lot that I need to get the heck out. You know, and my life has been this series of holding patterns where I'm in these small pots that I grow and I perpetually feel like I'm in the wrong sized pot and that early dream of the system of going to fish tank and having this outflowing of fresh water and coming into a bigger space. I've been doing a lot of that work recently around that. And just yesterday, actually just earlier today, I found two shells that I had kept one from when I was 27 years ago. And one from when I was living on Vancouver Island, but probably about 20 even 12 years ago. And the two cells ended up representing the growth that they're going through recently and they actually fit into each other perfectly. And it's just this really wild, like, Oh my gosh, here's little me fitting into a larger pot. And like, it was just the things keep showing up. And I have such a preponderance of things like this in my life that I go, okay, that's gotta be, I don't know what you'd want to call that kind of a gift where you notice metaphors that keeps speaking to you in your dreams and in the outside world and in nature objects. And like, I don't know what that's called, but
Heather:It doesn't need a name. It doesn't need a name and it is. And I love it because it's the first time somebody actually said that that's how their intuition comes. And I really, I recognize it in myself, sometimes that is happening, but I haven't identified it for people to know that this too is intuition. So thank you so much, Sarah, for sharing that. Cause that's huge.
Sarah:It's cool. And another one that I have is, um, not just the dreams and noticing the metaphors and noticing the little sign posts as I call them, but it's also animals. So I have always had a really strong connection with animals. I will never call myself a whisper of any kind cause I don't see myself like that and that's not been my experience. But when I do receive, um, with animals is, um, I will have animal metaphors show up in my life at various times where it's not usually domesticated it's, it's wild animals showing up at various points, what they do their behavior when they show up the timing of when they show up matches what's going on in my life. And it's really quite uncanny. I'll give an example. So one that has been very important for me. There's a book called animal speak by a person by the name of Ted Andrews. It's an oldie, but a goodie. And I want to be careful in naming that book because I don't know if Ted is indigenous or if he's like an individual who has appropriated, you know, shamonic or indigenous practices as a white person. You know what I mean? Like I'm always really wanting to be careful about stuff like that. Cause that's really important to me to, you know, not appropriate and to make sure I'm going to the right source. And it's not this distilled down colonialized soapbox. I can get onto it for another time perhaps. But so anyway, in the pet Andrew's book, there's a lot of it basically talks about what metaphors animals represent in various cultures and, and that kind of thing. And so one of the animals that has been a very strong messenger animal, so to speak for me are Red Tail Hawks. And they often show up in my life at interesting times and I've always wanted a red tailed Hawk that I collect feathers. I I'm always finding feathers and I have quite a lot of really cool feathers. And so I've always wanted a red tail Hawk setter. And of course that never crossed my path. And I was like, Oh gosh, you know, gosh, these red tail Hawks have so much meaning for me, if I think of the 10 Andrew's book, like one of the things is how red tails, the red tail of the red tail Hawk. If you're into Eastern spirituality and chakras, the red tail represents the root chakra, which is red. And I have often had a lot of wounding with my root chakra difficulty with feeling grounded because again, the pot's always been small. I never really feel rooted in a particular place because the place always is too confining for me, whether physically or emotionally. And I've also read trustingly enough. I had a lot of pelvic issues in my adult life and had to go through pelvic floor to do therapy and work on all my sort of wounded female stuff, which again is part of the red tailed, Hawk imagery. And there's another piece around the red tailed Hawk, which is, it has a home territory. It's very loyal and I'm like, wow, that's something I feel like I need, like, I don't know what that's like to have a place of home that feels big enough that you feel comfortable having your own territory. That's not something that I'm used to. And then there's of course the piece around how red tail Hawks often get attacked by crows. And that usually represents the according to Ted Andrews. Anyway, they need to learn how to rise above adversity. And I've had in my life a lot of patterns in my life of being a convenient target for people with unresolved issues and having stuff dumped on me and having been, I mean, that's everything from, you know, family members to pass partners, you know, romantic partners and so on. And even, you know, being the victim of criminal and civil harassment for a four year period of my life and going my goodness like, like that red tailed energy is really the rising above all these adversities, the crows that keep attacking that are not having anything to do with me, you know, and I have, uh, interestingly it was about two years ago in the midst of a whole bunch of ongoing harassment. I was driving to work one day and this was during a period of months where I had been experiencing, uh, animals while out on my drives to work. I drive the back country roads all the time. And like one day I'll just quickly go through them. Like one day, a bunch of deer crossed on a day where something happened related to the deer metaphor. And you know, another day I was driving on that stretch of road and there was a little white stuff that, you know, nutrition's have clearly not a while ago, clearly a domesticated dove that just happened to land on the side of the road. And I hung out with it for awhile. I pulled over. I'm like, I'm stopping here. And I pulled over and hung out with the birds for a bit. And at the time meant there was something I hadn't written down. And I can't recall again, the details that that lined up. And then there was a whole bunch of other stuff related to various animals and champing, girdles and seeding a snapping turtle from traffic and all these things that line up. And then what was interesting was I encountered as I was driving home from work in March of that particular year, I was driving home from work and I had just received another harassment incidents from my harasser. And I was just gutted. I was just like, Oh my God, this doesn't end. Like it doesn't stop. And as I'm driving home, it was nighttime. And I had just had a brutal day of dealing with more of the harassment and I'm driving home and there's a baby possum on the road. It was in the middle of the road. And I think the car before me had just hit it. So it was literally just sitting there not moving. And so I pulled my car over, went back to it and it had been hit. And so it was not in the best of shape. And so I literally picked it up, got it to a vet and had it put down and I had to look up the meaning of a possible cause I'm like, what is this? Like why a possum on the day that I've been harassed or what's the Pasa about it's about playing dead, right? It's about, you know, being able to dial in the face of threat. And I absolutely was completely immobilized and gutted by what was going on in my life at that time. And what was super fascinating was, um, a few months later I'm driving to work one morning and then all of a sudden on a stretch of road that I drove by every day, there was a red tailed Hawk on the ground. And I was like, okay, what is going on? And so I pulled over and I walked over to it and it was like perfectly on the gravel. It had died and I'm sitting there going, what, what expense? Like so many cars I've driven past here. Like this Claremont, it wasn't roadkill because it was in perfect condition. It wasn't demolished. It was like, it had literally landed there and died. And so I contacted the ministry of natural resources to get the permission, to keep the bird because you have to do that kind of thing. And I brought it, I was like, what do I do? And I brought it to work and I kind of did a little ceremony. I got my smudge stuff out and I burned. And I read the section on red tailed Hawk again in the book. And I looked up other sources on the internet of important bitterness origin because sort of corroborate what Ted enters a thing and his book. And I was like, okay, this is bringing something to me. What is it you need? What is it you want? Like, I'm not going to harvest feathers from you. You're in perfect condition. And so what ended up happening was I he's in my office, he's there in the upper corner of my bookshelf and he's a three year old male died by poison, probably a farmer, a local farmer with a most know, most bait out. And that travels up the food chain. But what's fascinating is that I have seen this bird for three years. I drive the same country road or what is driving the same country road every day to go to the office and saw that bird, that bird was on my territory. And now that bird, like I know the bird that night. Um, and I was like, this is wild. And so a few months after that, after I got the bird back, I was driving the same sets of road and to go home and I was driving over the Hill and I was like, I wonder if I'm going to see in a pasta here. It was right after a moment of victory and dealing with the processes that the harasser had initiated. And it was one of those triumphant days. And I was like, Oh, I wonder, I wonder if I'm going to see it in a positive way or like Heather yet I have to understand, like I hadn't seen her the past. I had driven that road for months since other opossums never fallen again, driving home. I was like, I wonder if I'm going to see one, I get over the crest of the Hill and there's one on the side of the road from exact same spot. I know my, okay, this is, this has gotta be something like, you know, and I was like, that is wild. And I was like, okay, what is that? And I, I took it, the message I got from it was you can start to come out of freeze now. Right. You know? And I was like, Oh, okay, thanks a possum. I was like, okay. And so there was all these, all these examples like this. And I, I have so, so, so many of them, um, and it's like, I don't know how to explain it, but it's something I've come to learn to trust like the shiver that goes down my leg when something feels like it's aligned or right. I've just learned to trust it and not think of it as weird and not think of it as unscientific, you know, like I'm just coming to go. It happens and whatever it happens, it's dead on accurate. I cannot explain it. It just is that
Heather:Timing is the best kind. I'm so appreciative of you sharing your sh your intuitive stories with us today because it will resonate with so many people. And it may just make them pay a little bit closer attention to those synchronicities and to the animals that show up in their life because they are messengers. All of it is messages. So thank you so much, Sarah. We really, really, truly appreciate what you've shared with us today.
Sarah:You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me, Heather, I look forward to doing this again. Some time take care. Yeah, you too.
Heather:Thank you so much for giving us your time today. We truly appreciate our guests for sharing their stories and insights about how intuition has impacted their lives. And I'm so grateful for Peter trainer for his time and giving me this original music. It's now your turn. It's your turn to listen and act on your own intuition and help make the world a better place until next time, keep seeing being, knowing, and doing. If you like this podcast, please share it. If you want to find others, like it, go to www dot healing, vitality.ca or wherever you would find your podcasts. We would love to have you join us on this journey. Come be a Crow sitting in the tree, be part of our community.[inaudible].