#99 Becoming an Objective Observer of Your Horse with Shannon Beahen

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:00:01-00:00:11]
In this episode, we're talking with Shannon Bayen, also known online as Humming Horse, a trauma-informed horse trainer, online educator, academic, and writer.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:00:12-00:00:22]
First, it's our eyes watching, then it's our body a little closer, then it's maybe our hand touching or even suggesting touch, and then we're watching their reaction.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:00:23-00:01:49]
Welcome to the Equestrian Connection podcast from WeHorse. My name is Danielle Kroll and I'm your host. Shannon Bayan specializes in teaching her own consent-based approach to natural dressage and liberty, equine care and co-living, as well as the creation of species-appropriate habitats that promote dynamic movement and autonomous equine lifestyles. She is passionate about exploring and articulating the ethics of embodied horse-human relationships, and her hope is that through teaching a deeper awareness of human-animal and human-environment relations, equestrian education ceases to be a privileged pastime that replicates outdated domination logics, and instead may just provide some of the seeds to birth a new earth. Shannon has been an Equestrian Canada certified competition coach since the late 90s, studying topics related to human animal ethics, language and philosophy since 2008, a BA, MA, PhD candidate. And she holds certifications in horse-human trauma recovery. lives on Vancouver Island where she tends acreage with her multi-species family. I'm so excited for this conversation, so let's dive in. Shannon, welcome to the WeHorse podcast. As mentioned, I've been following your stuff for a while and I'm really excited to have you here. And I know our listeners are as well because they actually recommended you. So welcome.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:01:50-00:02:06]
Thanks for having me. And thanks to whoever recommended me. It's my work can be a bit out there and you don't always know how it's perceived or what parts of what I'm sharing are really landing with people. So I'm excited to get into this.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:02:07-00:02:19]
Me too. So to kick us off, let's go back to sort of like the meat and potatoes, I'll say, of your work. So what it is or what is it that you do and what do you teach? Can we start there?

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:02:20-00:06:18]
Yeah, so I started out as a very traditional riding coach. I came up, you know, through riding schools and through, you know, whatever horse I could ride, mostly in the just... cross-training English tradition, foundation in dressage, jumping. You know, in North America, we have hunter-jumper. And so I did all those things, as well as eventing. And as I progressed as a student and then eventually as a coach, I came across the path of a really influential dressage coach. So got a lot of training in that dimension, even though I didn't really compete that much there, but I rode a lot of the young horses. But I also always loved jumping. So just full spectrum English education. We'll fill in a few other, you know, life journey, life path things that took me other places and into other professional avenues. But I'll just say that I was a regular coach. And along the way, slowly progressed to softer and softer methods, which... I could share a bit more about that journey. But as for what I do right now, I think the best way to explain it is that I, starting as a regular coach, I just kept zooming out to where can I have more influence on people? This dyadic, you know, this horse-human pairing that I'm teaching, and how can I help it be softer? So sometimes that involves taking into consideration what the human is experiencing as well as what the horse is experiencing. And eventually that became more like groundwork stuff and then more behavioral things. And then the more I zoomed out, then it became like environmental design or considerations. say like the zoom out got to a point where it became a zoom in again, which was a lot about the nervous system and what's going on between two bodies. So what that looks like now, like evolving from a regular coach to, I don't even really call myself a coach or a trainer anymore, although for simplicity's sake, I do. But what I do now is, It barely resembles what I used to do. Sometimes I'm doing observational work with a client and their herd, where we're trying to take in as much information as possible about the whole herd and see what the herd as like a superorganism is trying to tell us. Because the more you switch that kind of lens and change the scale of your lens, zooming out, zooming in, you start to realize that what you think is a riding problem isn't necessarily a riding problem. What you think is a training problem isn't necessarily a training problem. What you think is an interpersonal problem, well, often it is that. But even that interpersonal problem might have other dimensional influences. You know, it could be. Systemic power, it could be environmental design, it could be all those things. So all that to say what I do these days is pretty slow, pretty quiet. And sometimes it looks like regular training and regular coaching, but that's a much smaller percentage than what it used to be. And I'll also say Barely ever are you going to see... Bits or spurs or whips and sometimes no tack in my, in my sessions. And I, I'm not going to say never. Um, but a lot of those are probably a never for me.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:06:19-00:06:33]
Yeah. What moved you in this direction? Like, was there a specific shift that happened that led you to this point? Or was it like waking up one day and thinking, I don't think I can do this anymore?

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:06:35-00:11:59]
Yeah, it was death by a thousand cuts, I would say. I mean, just super quickly. I think even when I was at my most mainstream, my most like kind of embedded in the what we now call the dominance mode of training, but I would just say like the mainstream training. I always I always knew that horses needed to be turned out. Any horse of mine was turned out as much as possible, often on 24-hour field board. So I always knew that horses needed to move and be turned out, have as much freedom as possible when they're not being ridden. I loved to hack horses. You know, so when I was riding... When I was training in a dressage barn, a lot of those, you know, quote unquote dressage queens really would hack out. So I was always the one that's going to hack the horses out in fields, on the road. So I always understood that bodies need to be trained. needed freedom and bodies wanted to be happy in their skin. That's just something I innately understood. I would jump the dressage horses. If I was working at a jumping barn, I would hack those horses out in a field. So that was always there. But I worked in a lot of barns, you know, as I tried to plot my career path because I wanted to be a professional rider and I didn't have a ton of money. So plotting my career path was just like the grind of working in as many burns as possible, getting exposed to as much coaching as possible, trying to get exposed to the highest level of coaching that I could get access to. And that took me over to England where I trained with very high level eventers. But there was just like, I don't think I so much had a strong, a super strong ethic for the animal yet. I mean, I did in that freedom sense that I was talking about, that I understood their bodies needed to be moving and they should be happy. But I didn't understand all the like... Power dynamics that were going on. I didn't have language to put to that. I just knew that when I looked around at this career path that I was plotting and that I was achieving, everyone seemed kind of miserable. Like it was just, I'd look around, I mean, the horses in a lot of those facilities were, I think misery is That sounds like an extreme word, but I don't know what else to call it when you would walk by their stalls and they're pinning ears and they're making angry faces and they're lunging at you. Like, this is not normal. And yet it was normal in numerous facilities that I was at. And a lot of the people were kind of that way, too. I would say that I witnessed just, you know, I saw some overt abuse for sure. But I wouldn't even say that my big beef was with the overt abuse. Funnily enough, to me, what was grinding on me was kind of casual dehumanization. Of just depending on if you were a big money client or not. You are almost invisible. And I always had kind of a strong sense of justice about like, I am a person, you are a person, you deserve to be looked at in the eye and said hello to, you are a being that should be acknowledged. And I was seeing there wasn't a lot of that. And worse yet, yeah, I mean, there was just some crazy, crazy stuff I would witness as well. So death by a thousand cuts, I was just starting to not have fun anymore. It was really not that fun. And I loved horses. And I loved riding. So fortunately, I, you know, through a few twists and turns, was given advice to, like, if you really... you want to be a rider and you want to go further, go professionalize, like go get another career, make money in that career and fund your riding that way. So I did, I left the horse world. I never left it fully. I was always a coach, like since, since the late nineties, when I got my coaching designation, I have been a coach pretty much nonstop, even when I was doing other things. I would at least teach once or twice a week here and there. So I became a, I went to school for advertising way back in the day, and it was really fun because it was a creative profession. You know, I dyed my hair purple, I got piercings, and I lived in the world of, I would say, the arts and really enjoyed the contrast to what I would describe as that kind of misery that I was seeing in the horse world. And I had an amazing horse at the time that I just kept at a low-key barn, and I had fun with that horse. My plan was still to train him up as high as I could, to as high a level as I could. But I was professionalizing. And I got to feel other cultures beyond just the horse world. I know you mentioned earlier, like, you know, a large part of the audience for this podcast might be, you know, amateur riders and horse owners. So maybe the people listening don't know how ugly it can get in some of those worlds, although I suspect. I have a feeling that...

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:12:00-00:12:33]
I'm like, God, my neck is getting sore from nodding so much. And I'm like, I think that our audience is very much the same way. Like the visualizations that you described so clearly of walking along the like aisleways of Barnes and having angry horses from your mere existence. To have that dismissiveness, you know, in the, the like human areas of the barn, like all of those different things. It's unfortunately a very universal experience where it seems like in the equestrian world. So, yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:12:33-00:20:05]
Yeah. And, and like, I'm very lucky that. You know, there was a part of me that just couldn't, you know, I was partly enculturated into it. Like I, I partly went along with it because this is what happens when we are in plugged into certain environments. We takes us a while to really realize maybe that it's not a healthy environment, but there was always part of me that this was like, this is not. This is not okay. But I think, you know, what I'm talking about professionalizing and other fields and fields that had more fun and more play and more what I would call humanity to them. The contrast was so evident that it was like, oh, okay. It wasn't me. Like, that culture is really, I didn't even use words like toxic back then, but I just knew I didn't like that and I did like this. And that I became this other person. You know, when I talk about it. the purple hair and the piercings, it's like I had the freedom to break out of something. And so I went through a number of processes of breaking out of this thing that was the horse world, which, you know, the nature of owning horses and participating horses with horse culture is it's expensive, they're large animals, and it can take a lifetime to become a master, if not multiple lifetimes. And so it is an all-consuming thing. pastime. And so by that very nature, it kind of breeds certain obsessions and people become kind of one dimensionally, um, They become one-dimensional people. And that doesn't make for good empathy. And that doesn't make for good cross-referencing what else exists in the world. That does make for really easy programming and normalizing certain ways of being. So, again, that's just what I saw a lot of. Professionally, I went into the creative world. That got boring for me after a while. And I like much later in life became an academic because I was a writer when I was in the advertising world and I loved words. I loved playing with words. I love playing with ideas. I love the freedom I was given. in the advertising world to be very creative. But at a certain point, writing headlines to sell things wasn't quite doing it for me. And so I needed something deeper. And so I went to school and, like I say, later in life became an academic and loved it so much. I went all the way up. To do my PhD. And that's also where I was introduced to concepts of social justice. And then I had a name. I had a name to put on these power dynamics that I was seeing. And then things really started to fall into place for me to be able to name things like power dynamics, to understand the histories that create and sustain certain power dynamics. And in particular, you know, when you do kind of a social justice education, you'll learn about things like class inequity, race inequity, gender inequity, and the histories that feed into that. But even swimming in that for a while, something still felt unsatisfying. And it wasn't until I got to study about like environmental inequity and our relationship with animals and the history of what it means to be a human in the modern world, in the Western world. And how that comes at the sacrifice of animals. And this is a very old history, both materially and symbolically. how even repressing our own animal cells, our own bodily cells, is part of what it means to be a modern human. And if we're to rectify some of those inequities, it's going to come from re-inhabiting our bodies. re-inhabiting nature, for lack of a better term. I mean, that's become such a kind of reified term in modern times, and checking our relationship with animals. And so this journey into like being a creative and then becoming an academic came full circle where I was like, oh, now I can go back to the horse thing. In the academic realm and pick up some of the pieces that got fragmented way back, way back when, even though I was still kind of in the horse world, but not as much as I used to be and start to integrate it all. You know, there is other key things, you know, while I was doing the horse thing back in the early, early 2000s, I had a boyfriend that was into clicker training. He trained dogs. And so I learned about clicker training way back then, even before I had done this big transition. So I was already doing fun and cool things with my horses. I learned about, I got exposed to Canada's Horse Whisperer. This is way back, way back when, around 2000, Chris Irwin. And this was all like very new stuff. at the time. I just happened to stumble into one of his clinics and was like, oh, this is very different than what I teach in my lessons. So I already started incorporating some of that liberty work way back in those days, but it took a few other steps. It took, you know, going deeper into my own spirituality, yoga, deep meditation. It took getting very, very sick. My body just basically breaking down on me and me leaving my academic life. I'd say that would be the big hinge point. That brings me up to now. So there's a whole bunch of threads there. It had to happen on the like cultural level. It had to happen on the intellectual level. It had to happen. Really, the big one was when my body broke down. And then it started giving me real insights about what's going on inside a body that is responding to certain pressures of a culture. And what to do then? You know, like Gabor Mate has this book, When the Body Says No. And whether you've read that book or not, it doesn't really matter because the title is already so evocative. It's one thing to not be able to resist within, like, as a being with agency within a certain culture or subculture. It's another thing when the body says, look, I don't care whether you are going to consciously resist, like I'm going to break down, or I'm just not going to be able to do the things that I, I, you've been making me do. And so that was the big one for me and to feel layers of vulnerability in my own body. Was some of the greatest lessons that helped me rebuild my relationship with horses in really refined, really nuanced ways that no course could have ever taught me.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:20:09-00:21:03]
I love... Like all of that, like the complexity of all of that, like, you know, all of the different things and the direction that we can kind of go with all of that, because there's so much in there, like you said, about the power dynamics, about the one dimensional thinking and like tunnel vision, you know, when you're only exposed to like one, one side of things or something like that. And. And I think a lot about the equestrian industry, like what we had said earlier about walking down the barn aisle and seeing the angry horses and assuming that's right, you know, or assuming that's just the way it is. And there's nothing wrong with that or, you know, anything like that. I know that that's very much something that I witnessed growing up in the horse industry is, you know, walking down that barn aisle and thinking, you know, stick to that opposite side of the wall to avoid that horse, you know.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:21:03-00:21:07]
Yes. And the gaslighting of those particular horses, too.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:21:08-00:21:08]
Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:21:08-00:21:12]
Like he's just crazy or even teasing them. Yes.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:21:12-00:23:35]
Yeah. And I, I think to, um, my boarding experience. So one of the things that I've been doing with this podcast, I had mentioned to you before we started recording about how, you know, as myself, as an amateur horse owner, um, I love bringing more awareness to other horse owners. The more that I learn, the more I want to share. Or the more that I don't know, the more I want to learn. And, you know, and then. It's like help everybody else learn. When we know better, we do better. One of the things that I'm realizing with having my horses home, and I've had them home now since 2022, and I'm learning every single day and tweaking mistakes that I make and all of those different things. And looking at that one-dimensional thinking that I had when I boarded, because I didn't know any better. I wasn't exposed to anything else in my horse's life other than the two hours I was there a day, you know? And so I think, too, when I boarded, and I've always been fortunate enough to board at facilities that had indoor arenas. And so here in Canada, if we don't have an indoor arena, generally we're not really doing much during the winter, depending on the year. And so the indoor arena always allowed me to ride year round. No matter what the weather, no matter, you know, what was going on, you were able to still tack up and get on and ride. And now with my horses at home, I'm seeing so much more that goes on in their lives throughout the seasons, throughout, you know, the environment in general that would make me second guess. I don't think that they're feeling up to doing anything today. And so I wanted to bring that into our conversation. Like you'd said, that one dimensional thinking where. We're not exposed to anything else and how allowing ourselves to have a little bit more of an empathy of the horse's experience in their environment and in their lives then allows us to tweak how we might approach it. So that rather than escalating pressure because we think just get on with it. We might think, oh, you know what? It was really windy last night and they live outside. I bet they're exhausted from lack of sleep.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:23:35-00:23:36]
Yeah.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:23:36-00:23:40]
You know, whatever it may be, I'd love to kind of speak to that is like the...

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:23:41-00:23:41]
My favorite thing.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:23:41-00:23:43]
Yeah. Yeah. Great. Let's go there.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:23:44-00:26:40]
Yeah. And this is what like, you know, when I... When we opened, and I have a hard time explaining what I do these days. It's best for if people are interested, like just maybe like tune into my Instagram or because it's something you just kind of have to watch. And when I say that what I do doesn't look like normal coaching anymore. And in fact, if you were to watch me teach, sometimes it doesn't look like much of anything is happening. And so it's like, well, what is happening? If you're not, doesn't look like something's happening, what is happening? And I was like, the main thing I'm doing and I'm trying to help horse owners to do, I'll also say like most of the people I work with now are people with their own horses. And I'm helping them to have better relationships with their horses. So I'm usually working one-on-one. What I'm helping them to do is observe and spend a lot of time observing, helping them to be better. seers and watchers and discerners of information and to not take a pre-existing idea of how things should be because you were taught this at your boarding facility or you were taught this by your one and only coach or you read this book or you follow this person online and they say you should do it like this. Let me just say right now, there's a zillion different ways to do it. And in fact, we live in the golden age now of different ways to do it in terms of horsemanship. In my day, there weren't. There was like English or there was Western. That was how it went. There might be slight variations. So what you're talking about, having your horses home and already yourself, you're starting to notice. Who they are as like fully dimensional beings. You know, they're not just this thing that sits in a stall waiting for you to come there after school or after work. And then you turn the being on like it's a, like it's a toy on a shelf and now you're going to take it off the shelf and now it animates to life. I mean, these are some of the implicit suggestions. No one would ever say that. But these are some of the implicit suggestions of boarding a horse in a facility and keeping it in a box till you show up. And it's got your name on the stall and it's got their name on the stall. It's your object. When you bring them home, as you're describing, and I'm not sure what your setup is, but I think a lot of us that have them home probably have a window in our house where we can look out the window. To the horses. I'm always creeping on them. Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same. It makes doing dishes a lot easier because where the sink is is oriented towards the horses. You start to see, oh, man, these are like beings with, I mean, if you didn't already know. Right. These are beings with their own complete lives, even if they don't have super rich environments. They have 24 hours in the day in which if you let them out of the box, they are going to be experiencing life. And you start to see these little fluctuations through the day.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:26:41-00:27:35]
So I want to add to that as well as like. I fully recognize that the majority of equestrians board their horses. The majority of them do not have their horses at home. And so my goal with this is not to say, oh, you should bring your horse home and then you get to know them better. It's more so saying with the awareness that we have as them being, you know, these sentient beings, it's to then apply that lens to when you go to the barn, when you go to your boarding facility. And so I think it's within that looking at like, what are some of the different, um, day-to-day things that a horse could be going through. And I know that's really like layered, but like some of those things that maybe, you know, the average person listening could think, oh, I can apply that to my horse or I can keep that in mind.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:27:35-00:33:58]
Yes, totally. What I think you're speaking to there, where it ties in with how I do my work these days, is what I'm calling observational horsemanship. That's not the name of my entire method, but it's a portion of one's approach to horses that I'm really trying to encourage. Horse owners to have. Now, if you only see your horses for a certain portion of the day, which I understand, like I live with my horses, but it doesn't mean that I'm out there all day long with them. But the invitation here is to spend a little more time watching and also I mean, the word rhythm is coming to me here. Um, The more you can understand about your horse's daily rhythm, which will, of course, change a bit day to day and season to season and year to year. But even if, you know, let's say it's someone with a horse at a boarding facility, if you can get to understand better. Where are they typically at in their rhythm of their day when you happen to arrive? If it's often at the same time. If it's not, then still get a picture of what's the general rhythm. I think most horse owners do kind of know that because there's feed schedules. Right. So, you know, even with my own horses, I'm pretty consistent with... Like, I'm not going to, my horses are not on 24 hours hay, even though that is the common practice with more natural lifestyles, which. I do typically encourage, but we have certain health considerations that they can't do that. So that part is similar to boarding facilities. I'm not going to go and try and ask them to be ridden just after they've gotten hay. That might sound obvious, but some people forget this. Or they might say, well, I know that, but this is just the only time I can get to the barn. And so I have to do it then. And it's like, okay, I get that. That's fine. But just know that and know that that's already going to add some tension, likely, or it's going to be a consideration of where they are in the rhythm of their day that you're going to want to consider. And what's the solution for that? Well, it might be as simple as just give them a little bit of loose hay as you're grooming or tacking up or whatever it is you do. But the big invitation is watching more. And understanding rhythms. That would also mean that if you are someone that can only show up at the barn for, you know, your hour, your two hours that you're there, maybe take a few sessions to just observe. Like, don't get right into it. And I mean, I'm a pretty good observer. But the more I go into this practice and the more clients become open to me taking them through this practice of let's just watch, let's let the horses have more of a voice by us getting quieter and quieter and more still and more just in the flow. field, the field of observation itself creates certain circumstances. It does not cease to amaze me what people holding witnessing power brings about. And the horses, I would say, you know, nature, quote unquote, nature, animals in general, seem to very much be receptive to understanding they're being watched. Prey animals, certainly. And of course, there's different kinds of gazes. We can have a predatory gaze when we're watching, and we want to be aware of that. That's something that, as I go into observational horsemanship with certain... Certain clients, I do start to notice, oh, you're hyper-focusing. You're getting a bit of a predatory gaze, and we want to work on what even that is. But leaving that aside, it's just more watching. And what might be some of the things we watch for? Well, what state are they in when we arrive? You know, like, are they in a field? Are they in a box? Are they with friends? Are they eating? Are they just standing there? Are they alert? Are they resting? In, let's say, a five or ten minute span, how many different states do they go through? Like, if you watch really closely, and I watch really closely, like... You know, some people will say to me, because one of my specialty areas has been shut down horses, you know, working with horses that don't want to. A lot of people see fancy videos online, trainers doing really remarkable things. And what they don't realize is a lot of the time, those are more like highly aroused horses. And those kind of interactions always lead to more spectacular visuals, right? Not as many people. That are uploading videos of horses that like don't want to move. So I get a lot of clients that come to me saying like, my horse doesn't want to move. They don't move. And so we go into observational horsemanship mode and it's like, is that true that they don't want to move? Like, or is it only under certain circumstances they don't want to move? And let's just watch for a moment before we even bring ourselves into the equation. Do you see movement? No, they're not moving. Well, their ear just moved. Their head just moved. Their neck just moved. Oh, and there's a footstep. Oh, there's a tail swish. Yeah, but that's not moving. Well. Let's just start there. They are moving, right? And if we can get a little bit of movement, let's see where it goes from there. So I'll pause for a moment just to make sure some of this is landing. But it's kind of back to this idea of like zooming in and zooming out. And I'm very... In love with both. You know, the zoom out is let's hang out on the edge of the field and just watch. The zoom in is how many little details can we notice? About how my horse is in its body separate from me. And I always kind of say it's like double dutch. Have you ever done double dutch or seen it? Like if you do double dutch skipping, I'm talking about children's game typically, you'll watch that before someone goes into the double dutch, they kind of watch.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:33:58-00:33:59]
Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:33:59-00:34:03]
And then their body starts to catch a rhythm. And then you see them.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:34:03-00:34:04]
Yeah. Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:34:04-00:34:58]
Well, and then they start to make moves like they might jump in, but they're still like, is this the time? Is this the time? And then they jump in. And then sometimes it's a fail and they hit the skip and then got to come out and start all over. And then other times they're in the rhythm. I'm trying to teach people to do more like this with horses. Watch the rhythms for a while. Watch the rhythms. Then toy with the idea of entering the rhythms. But even as you toy with the idea of entering the rhythm, there's kind of a flexibility and a bounciness that is ready to do either or. I'm not committed to this has to happen. I'm in a more playful, embodied stance of this might happen, this might happen, this might happen, this might happen. I might ask, you might ask. So it's kind of the double dutch approach to things. Does this make sense? Or do you want me to drop into some specifics?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:34:58-00:35:52]
I love that analogy so much. I'm a really visual learner. So adding that analogy is really helpful. As long as our audience. understands double dutch and if you don't um like youtube video a double like go like find out what double dutch is and then it'll make total sense yeah one of the things that i i'm also thinking um you know when when we have like a discussion like this is this idea that as humans it's very um It's very much in our nature to also create a story around things. And so. Find like, what is your advice on finding that balance between observing with like, you know, just like complete observation versus observing and putting an assumption on it or creating a story around it?

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:35:52-00:41:50]
Yeah, this is another big part of. My work. So you're right. We're right in the same place because you're right that observing can almost always become storytelling and meaning making. And I think even just starting by knowing that it, that we're trying to achieve something prior to meaning making, even though we're not going to be perfect at it because we're meaning making creatures. But just knowing that that's, I'm always wanting to get the step before the step before the step before the step so we can kind of deconstruct the thing that we don't want to be happening and catch it before the things we don't want to be happening happen. And so just knowing, oh, that's a place, that's a step prior that we can try to locate. We're observing. Okay, I'm not exactly sure what this lady's talking about, but something about observing, something about just standing back and seeing what their rhythms are. And then just knowing that if we're already starting to tell a story, can we just catch ourselves there? And it's like, well, what do we have if we don't have a story? What is there? I think it's helpful to have words like sensation. Um, It's helped to have like movement words. There's a whole collection of phenomena that happens in the world. Let's say when we're watching nature. That doesn't, there's birds I watch, there's birds I can see outside my window right now that I don't necessarily know what their name is. I don't know what their Latin name is. I don't know what their common name is. I don't know if they're native to this area. Those would all be kind of story features. But I can still... I can still glean something about them. I can go, oh, those are the cute ones. Those are the ones, you know, and that, how do I know they're cute? Well, it just, it brings a smile to my face. They give me a certain kind of feeling. They move really fast. They only come in at this time of year. Oh, they have these kinds of colors. Okay, well, what else do we notice when those birds come in? Oh, those birds only come in when there's buds, these kinds of buds on the tree. Ah, okay. So we're just collecting data points. Some might be visual. Some might be sensations we feel in our body. Some might be sensations we're kind of picking up on, but we're maybe not sure if they're in our body or if they're coming from elsewhere. I mean, just at the sensation level, there's so many, so much of our vocabulary we can start to develop more of. This is one practical way to come back into the body. Because even that can be this very abstract concept. Like, get back into your body. You're not embodied enough. And it's like, well, one way is to just, like, notice. Are you breathing? Oh, no, I'm holding my breath. Okay. Is that horse breathing? How would I know if they're breathing? Well, they're alive. How would I know what the quality of their breath is? Oh, I'm looking at their diaphragm and I can barely see any movement. Oh, okay. Is that normal for them? I'm not sure. I've never noticed before. Great. Start noticing that. Right. So things like sensations, I, you know, it's fun to get technical knowledge. It's really fun to learn about anatomy. It's fun to learn about nervous systems. It's fun to learn about biomechanics. It's fun. But there are ways we can get to know their bodies and our bodies that don't have to require that kind of vocabulary. I like to play with concepts like, do I feel T? Tense or do I feel relaxed? Do I feel open or do I feel closed? Do I feel hypervigilant? I mean, that's already a big word. Do I feel like I'm able to take time to observe or do I feel like things are happening so fast that there's no time to observe? Even that, are things happening quickly? Are things happening slowly? Do I feel warm? Do I feel cold? Are they up or are they down? Are they loose or are they stiff? These are all... Data points we can be collecting. And it's like, okay, but when do we get to the meaning making? When is it okay to start making meaning? I would just say like collect for a while and start to notice patterns. Are they always like this? Are they never like this? Are they always like this lately, but they didn't used to be like this? And sometimes pattern observing, so noticing phenomena, as I've just mentioned, and then collecting the phenomena into like patterns, the patterns start to speak their own story. That would be different than us going, so Shannon, I'll take your invitation to just notice some of these qualities. That horse looks stiff. That horse looks loose. Oh gosh, that horse looks stiff. Are they lame? Is that a lameness? Oh, my God. Is that what kind of lameness? Hey, can you come over here and look at my horse? What kind of lameness is this? Should I be calling the vet? I should probably call the vet. No, I'm going to look it up. I'll go. Slow down. We don't even need to go there yet. And it's really neat because you can start to become your own. I'm not saying exclude vets or exclude other professionals from the equation, but we can start to be better observers and even start to. Begin informal diagnoses on our own by collecting as much information about just what's going on in the material world. Does that make sense? Do you want me to say more about meaning making and storying?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:41:50-00:43:40]
It makes so much sense. I'm also looking at it from the perspective of, like you had said, like the diagnosis or including like our equine professionals. I'm someone, too, that pays a lot of attention to things. And I'll take that as. Data and I'll say to my osteopath, oh, my mare's chewing slightly differently, you know, or I'll say to my farrier, he's standing with his foot kind of, you know, like he'll, I noticed him resting his leg on an elevated surface, you know, or like something like that. Like I'm able to take all of those different things. And, and at the end of the day, like, That is so important to my horse's actual care. to their, you know, physical bodies. It's, you know, if we really bring it down, you know, and I bring it back to, you know, like a goal or something like that, like me being this observational on these sorts of things is going to help me, um, improve our training or our riding or for my horse to enjoy working with me more because they're feeling better in their bodies you know all of those different things where it's like this these observation skills that you mentioned are such important data for us as horse owners um And it's important for ourselves as well. Like you had mentioned, like the way that we even look at our horses, like that is so important. The way that our body language is, the way that our breath is, you know, and it makes us more self-aware as humans. It makes us more self-aware of the way that our horses may perceive us. I'm obsessed with this sort of stuff.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:43:41-00:44:07]
Yeah. And even as I'm hearing you relay some of that back, I'm imagining that listeners might be thinking, okay, but now what? Like, now what do I do with that information? And I'm hoping we have time to get into some of that detail. I would even just say, like, I think you used the word earlier, like, how do we not escalate pressure? That is something I'd love to get into. Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:44:07-00:44:07]
Absolutely.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:44:07-00:45:23]
But I just already want to kind of highlight how our own humanness is we're meaning-making machines and we're quite fast. We're quite fast to leave phenomena if we were ever even in it. Some people live entirely in their heads and increasingly we're being kind of trained to live more and more in our heads or more in virtual realms. So I just want to, like, using this word escalation, and we can talk about pressure escalation and the techniques, like the horsemanship and coaching and training techniques around avoiding pressure escalation. But I just want to say that this concept of escalation in general is something we want to catch even at these layers. How fast do we move to be... In phenomena, just in it. Imagine being in, if you were lucky enough to sit in a field of wild horses, would you spend that time just microanalyze? I mean, a lot, I think a lot of horse people would microanalyzing their bodies thinking, oh God, that looks lame. That looks swollen. How would that back ever carry a rider? Oh my God, that part of the neck. I mean, hopefully they wouldn't see these things in wild horses. Or would you have the ability to just be in it?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:45:23-00:45:24]
Such a good point. Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:45:24-00:46:33]
To notice the smells, to notice the sounds, to notice the different vibrations of being around wildness. To not see them as objects that need to be moved. modified or analyzed or to just be in it. And that the leap to meeting making or even, you know, calling in the professional is a leap. It's a fast leap. It's an escalation. It's a speed. It's a movement that takes us out of something. And into a whole other dimension that I have to say is very far removed. You know, people are using more words about like being anti-anthropocentric, being less human-centered and more animal-centered. We use these words. I'm seeing colleagues that I'm very aligned with use these words. But I still see so much leaping to the human dimension of being in the mind, being in the analysis, being in the diagnosis, being in the professional expertise, and not just being with.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:46:35-00:47:05]
Okay. This brings me, I have a question written down here and I'm, I, I, yeah, I'd love to ask you this is the, the circumstances where the word quote care crosses the line into control in horsemanship, or we look at, um, what we're seeing as observation and putting actually a spin as fixing on things.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:47:07-00:52:44]
This is really the core. And I know we're leaping past a lot of like what could be the specifics of my work, like pressures and this kind of stuff. But this is really a bigger concept. You know, seeing the animal as this object to be fixed. And what was the other thing you said? Care. Care and control. Yeah. This is such a fine line. And again, you know, where I situate myself in kind of the many offerings of horsemanship offerings that are out there is like this very crude kind of explanation. I'm no longer in the dominance realms. I'm no longer in the performance realms. I'm over here in something softer. And over here in the something softer, this undefined softness, just this general impulse to be nicer to horses, I'm seeing a lot of the same kind of things happen that I see happen in what we are also calling the dominance realm. But they're cloaked in different clothing. It's more in the clothing of care. And compassion. And yet I still ask, where is the horse as its own being in this? So I think words or concepts like just remembering the process of domestication that has happened and that that is already, I mean, there's debates about how domestication took place. Did we just do that to the animal or is this something that co-evolved, right? And My. My understanding of increasingly the research we're getting back on this is that it wasn't entirely humans just went and did this to an animal and said, like, you're ours now. We're going to make you part of our domesticated world. That there was some kind of acts of agency on the part of whether it was a dog or whether it was a horse or whether it was a cat where they. Did enact some choice in it. Although I'd be careful to even take the findings on that and then say, this is equal. Because I think we can most certainly agree that this is not equal. Because what would equal mean? Well, it's understanding things like agency. What does that even mean? If that's not part of kind of your vocabulary as a horse person that's trying to be conscientious towards a horse's needs, I'd say that word or something like it needs to be in there. And this gets very philosophical very quickly because it's like, well, what do we mean by agency? We're talking about free will. What does it mean to have free will when you're already in a captive environment and a heavily domesticated environment? We've been breeding certain breeds for certain functions for very long times. We've been kind of enforcing certain characteristics into their DNA. This is... Layered dimensions of control already baked into the organism before it even lands on the ground from its mother's body. Does that make sense? I know this is out there, but this is all part of the consideration. So this idea of care, I think, is already coming. It needs to be considered within the context of understanding domestication and what captivity does to bodies. And that if we want to have more balanced, equal relationships, or we want to return some of the horse back to the horse, it needs to come from examining when our care is consistently making this movement of, I know better than you. We do this to our own bodies. I mean, we're told constantly, like, There's some outside force knows more about your body than you do. And I get it. This isn't an all or nothing. Like I'm not saying Western medicine, we don't participate. It's amazing that we have Western medicine. And it's amazing that we have the ability to care for our horses the way we do. But can we allow our own human bodies? To have just a little more say or develop a relationship with the body where we listen to it a bit more. Oh, I get this craving at this time of day. What does that mean? Oh, whenever I eat this thing, I kind of feel like garbage, even though I kind of crave it. What's that all about? So listening to our bodies, listening to the horse a little bit more and knowing that it's going to be messy. Like there's no, if we, can't have some tolerance to get it a little bit wrong, I'd say we're not letting this thing called agency grow. If we're not, if there's not a little bit of, you know, dimensions of control come about to reduce to increase probability and decrease unknown variables. That's control. As I'm going to increase the possibility that the thing I think I want to happen is going to happen. If we're not existing with our animals in a way where things are a little... Little hairy. A little less predictable. I don't mean confusing because that's its own kind of abuse if the horse is just constantly in confusion. But just checking ourselves on the care thing a little bit. I mean, I think maybe having a concrete example might help. Like, is there a specific type of care that you're thinking about when you ask this question about how care and control works?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:52:46-00:54:11]
First of all, I love that you're balancing it with this, you know, that we're going from that like sort of like observational, like data sort of perspective with this. So thank you for that, for creating like the balance in there. And so. When I think of it about like the control within. within the care. I, um, I'll use, I'll speak for myself here with, with my own example. I'm not going to, um, broadly, um, blanket anything here. So I have a mare that she has a lot of pathologies in her body, a lot of things that, you know, have been going on. And she requires a lot of osteopathic care to maintain, you know, her quality of life. And there's a lot of times that I'll see her. Doing something that maybe I'll think, oh, I wouldn't do it that way. You know, or like, I don't know if that's in your best interest. And perhaps for her, it's she knows her body. And she knows what's going to feel best in that moment or whatever it may be. And so that's where we kind of have that little bit of like that.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:54:11-00:54:12]
Yeah.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:54:12-00:54:12]
Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:54:13-00:56:24]
Yeah. And so that's, this is, this is great. That's perfect because yes. So I've been told the body should be a certain way. The body's not being the way I've been kind of led to understand either through my own beliefs or through outside beliefs that a body should be. But yet here it is being this thing. I want to be a good horse person that doesn't just like, you know, totally control my horse. life, but I also don't want to be negligent. This line between like agency and negligence, it's a line I ride every day. And I don't ever arrive at a place that just feels solid. And if I do, it's probably because I've fallen into a more concrete belief system. This is what it is to be wild. To ride these lines and they're uncomfortable lines. So I work with bodies like this all the time. Bodies that are not, I mean, what body does conform entirely to these various standards? We can open up Instagram and we can immediately as horse people in our feed, see these types of posts, green lines and red lines pointing to certain body parts. This is how the neck should be. This is how the back should be. Well-intentioned, well-intentioned. But, I mean, this is me even coming from being sick, you know, and a lot of my insights coming from being sick. This can be a very ableist way of looking at bodies. And these are new forms of control, right? We may not control bodies the way we used to or humans the way we used to or animals the way we used to, but we're always as humans seem to find new ways to control them. And they're very seductive ways because they seem very like, oh, but it's for a good reason. So the observational horsemanship would come into this. Like, oh, my mare is doing this thing that I wouldn't do it that way. Isn't that interest? Isn't that interesting that she does it that way? And I would just spend a lot of time watching it. Is it always like that? Is it sometimes like that? Is it only in certain circumstances? What was she like before she did that? You know, like, I don't know, is it a step she does, a movement she does?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:56:25-00:57:12]
Yeah, there's a couple different things. So she has an issue with one of her SI joints, and it causes her pelvis to sometimes be a little twisty, which is where the osteopathic care comes in. And so sometimes you'll see her just kind of like, you know, rebalancing herself in the way that she'll shift her weight. I'm noticing there's a trend where it's starting to come up towards her pole if she doesn't have regular care. So she'll start to tilt her head differently, change the way she chews, things like that. So there's, you know, all of those sort of observational things. But again, is she... Is she having a crutch that I shouldn't try to take away from her in between?

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:57:13-00:57:13]
Yes.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:57:13-00:57:15]
You know, when she has her care. Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:57:15-01:06:55]
And I think many horse owners are starting to learn about things, hopefully. I mean, if you're working with an osteopath, I'm sure you're familiar with some of the concepts I'm about to say. But like, so there can be like. Original kind of whether it was born into their body or whether an injury happens, there can be kind of like the primary issue. And then around that issue, there becomes like coping mechanisms. But I also want to say like, it's really important to remember like bodies adapt. You know, I tell this story, I've told it on a few other podcasts about, it's in this book. Where is the book? The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin. It's about wild horses here in Canada. It's a great book about conservation and some of the narratives around wild horses. And I was horrified flipping through this book to see a picture of a wild horse in advanced states of laminitis. I didn't even know... Lemonitis could get to that level because I would have thought they would just have died. The deformity in this wild horse's hooves, very hard to look at. I had to close the book immediately, take some time away, maybe weeks, months, come back to it later and look at it again because it was just so hard for my domesticated sensibilities and all my judgments around what a body should be to look at that picture. And yet there it was, the horse was still living. And I could get into meaning making around the wild is so cruel. Nature is cruel. How can nature, you know, whatever stories wouldn't want to come up with. I could. For sure, little pings of that happened. And then in my observational mode and just looking at phenomena, well, first I check my own. Feelings. This is hard to look at this picture. I'm getting really... Anxious and scared looking at this because I just, my sensitivity towards animals and not wanting to see them suffer, this is hard to look at. Okay, is that her or is that me? Well, right now it's me. Okay, work on yourself for a second. What can you do to just be okay? Are you okay in this moment? Yes, I'm okay in this moment. Okay, have a look at it again. Have a look at it again. What does she look like? It's only a picture. It's hard to say, but let's just look at the picture. What does she look like? She seems okay. Like, I'm not seeing what I've been taught to see as pain face in this one snapshot picture. I forget if in the picture there was herd members around or if it just kind of gave a narrative about the fact that she was... Part of a herd, but I'm like, so she has, she doesn't seem to be like, she's doing okay. She's doing okay, at least in that moment. The body adapts. We in domestic environments and especially modern high technology environments don't Let bodies adapt. And perhaps we shouldn't. You know, there's maybe interventions that will be better than the adaptation. But just knowing bodies adapt, bodies have intelligence, bodies left to their own devices do wild things. Like in creative things that might not become fully expressed in one lifetime, but then might contribute to a longer evolutionary adaptation that is like miraculous, wild intelligence at play. So my invitation isn't to say never intervene. Only make the body supreme. Only listen to the individual. Let the individual express itself in its ways. I don't go that extreme. I try to meet it in the middle. But I would almost certainly say that almost every human, almost, is doing too much, especially if they have the budget and the education. They're going to almost always do too much to intervene. And can we just leave a little more space to get curious and to settle our own hyper kind of care modes to say, like, isn't it cool that bodies can adapt? But now also let's meet it in that place. So I'm usually just to like kind of give a tiny little flavor of what I do with something like that. I watch it for a long time. And I watch it before and after it's doing the thing when it does that thing. I check, like, does it do that when it's on its own? Or does it only do that when it's in a working session? Does it only do that when it's got a halter and a lead rope on? Does it only do that in that certain space? So I map. I map the thing that I'm concerned about. And I check my own reactions to it. How much am I going to be intervening in this body based on my own anxieties? And I'm playing out a pattern of anxiety that is actually a pattern that I play out with many. I'm not saying me specifically. This is a hypothetical person. When we start to realize like, oh, can I check my own anxieties? We might start to realize we do a lot of that in life. Oh, I get anxious and then I try and control it. And I have the budget and I have the education. I'm going to control it in all these ways. And then I'm going to get more education and more money. I'm going to control it in these other ways. Or can we just check our reaction? And then from there, I'm probably going to bring in some form of touch to get more relational information. Because back to this idea that the witnessing field, just the field of observation, the field of being an outside being, bringing its attention. To the being of concern, whose body is not doing what it's supposed to be doing, already has a power. And I don't, I'm not saying people need to only operate at that level. I'm just saying, could you also include that as a layer before the other layers where we call the vet or get the device or get the treatment or whatever the thing is? So it might be just at the level of witnessing. It might be at the level of slightly closer proximity of a body witnessing with some felt sense of each other. It might be, this is already what your body workers are doing, whether they know it or not, I suspect most of them know it, before they even start doing the thing that is their specifics of their modality. Can I now bring maybe touch to the areas? Can I use my touch as another form of observation? That's not meaning making yet. It's just going, oh, can I touch you here? Or do you have a big reaction? Can I touch you here? Or do you have a big reaction? How big is the reaction? Is it a huge reaction? Is it a small reaction? Is it I'm out of here, I'm never coming back, I don't want you to touch me? Or is it kind of like I just turn my head away and then you're still there and now I relax and I come back? Already at that level, stuff starts to shift. And you can see how that, can you picture kind of what I'm talking about? How first it's our eyes watching, then it's our body a little closer, then it's maybe our hand touching or even suggesting touch. And then we're watching their reaction. You can see where that might have. build up to even this thing that we call pressure, where now a hand might ask for a movement. But what if that hand that is asking for a movement isn't making the body move, but is more an exploratory hand that says, what would happen if I asked this body part to move or do something? And then we leave a lot of space for the various reactions that can come around that. I would say that a lot of my work takes place at this level because what already takes place in these layers of interaction that I'm talking about, things just start to shift in ways that are way better, way more interesting, way more collaborative. Than traditional horsemanship that is like, when I say move, you gotta move. And the realm of like diagnosis, therapeutics, gentle relationships starts to very softly enter into the dimension of And now we're moving. And now we're creating shapes around each other. And now I'm asking, can you go this way? And you come this way. And now you're asking, can we go that way? And we go that way. And lo and behold, one day it starts to look like if people follow my Instagram, you'll see me doing stuff, courses that are. bigger, bigger expressions of movement that can look quite fun. And people go, how do you do that? But I want to say like how I do that comes all the way back to your initial thing that you were saying of, oh, here's a body moving in space that is moving in a way that I'm not sure is correct or does it signal something wrong? And I'm saying that's all part of a spectrum of how I relate to their bodies. And I think just that invitation to start at observation, eyes, Maybe eventually it moves to proximity, bodies closer, but we're still watching all the details. Then maybe it moves into touch and we're watching all the details. And then it maybe goes back and now we're just moving away. And then they relax a bit. And then we come in. This is bodies. Relating to each other and diagnostics, training, therapeutics, they're all part of the same thing for me. Does that, can you kind of picture what I was saying?

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:06:55-01:08:09]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It, I'm just, I'm loving this conversation. Yeah. It's, There's two other things that I'd love to chat about. And one of them is... The concept of touch and pressure that you had mentioned. And so I'd love for, to create a little bit more of awareness and like concrete awareness for our listeners. So if somebody is listening and they're thinking, okay, so, I want to be more consent-based. my horses. I want to be, um, you know, um, more ethical with my horses. I don't want to just jump into escalating pressure in the ways that I was originally taught, you know, or whatever it might be. And so let's say they're working with their horse and their horse says no. And so then they find themselves stuck where every single day they're going to the barn and they're saying, well, my horse just keeps saying no, and we're not doing anything. And so what is that balance there between not overriding our horses?

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:08:10-01:08:10]
Yes.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:08:10-01:08:17]
And also perhaps not abandoning the ask so that we can still.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:08:17-01:08:18]
Yes.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:08:18-01:08:20]
Make relational progress.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:08:20-01:10:29]
Yeah. And this is important because I teach a lot about reading yeses and nos. And I use words like consent, although that's a very kind of imperfect concept, consent. But I'm definitely interested in helping horse owners to listen to yeses and nos more. But I also don't want them to conclude that when they get a no, that that's the end of the conversation. It might be, but I don't even think like I do so much of this work now, just like I call it excavating the no, right? Like, or mapping the no. There's very few horses I've met that they know they want you to stop at no. It's usually more, so even there, start. Start trying to distinguish between what is a yes, what is a no. Know that as a handler, you're probably going to get it wrong and you're going to be a bit confused. But if you're a little bit confused, that probably means the horse is having more agency. Probably, not for sure. But just hanging out in that world of, is that a yes or is that a no? But when you get a no... For me, that's the beginning of the conversation. And I actually love, I love some really ugly nose, even if they're like mechanical nose, like the leg goes, shows a lameness. It's very actually common with the type of work I do where I listen more to the horse. I let them have their nose. The more nose I let them have, the more they start to show me old nose. That they've either been hiding or got locked up in their body. So it's not uncommon for me to start to see lamenesses that were being covered up a little bit. Or maybe the dysfunction was kind of moving to some other part of the body and showing up there. Or it was in behavior. But then the more we let them say the no, then they kind of reveal, oh, actually, I have this like dysfunction in my left hind leg or something. So the main thing there is to say, like, no's are not the end of a conversation. To me, they're the beginning. And they're actually, like, I love that beginning. Um, So what are, what, what's the question here? Like how to concretely like work with a no?

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:10:30-01:11:06]
Yeah. So just, I think, um, perhaps giving a little bit more clarity to, to our listeners. There's a lot of, or at least it seems that way from, I'll say like my algorithm and like the things that I'm seeing where it's like, kind of like what you said, where when it's a no, you walk away. And so then, you know, you start to almost feel frustrated. And then there's that common thing of thinking, It was just easier when I did it the other way. It was just easier when I went up and I just halted them and I brought them to the barn, you know, and like doing sorts of things. And so now it's kind of finding that.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:11:07-01:11:07]
The middle.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:11:08-01:11:08]
Exactly.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:11:09-01:11:21]
So the middle, yeah, the middle is everything. And I know you want concrete answers and I'm going to give you very like. If you want concrete answers, book a session with me. I don't mean you specifically. Perfect.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:11:21-01:11:22]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:11:22-01:20:45]
Because it's very unique to the specific horse and how they show their no. But this can be the invitation. This word, the middle. I would say that most horse people, for the same reasons that I think, I shouldn't just say horse people, I think humans, for the same reason they might find it hard to just sit with the wild horses and be in the phenomena, have a deficiency in gradation of... Embodied language. They're very, like if you've ever spoken in a language that isn't your own tongue, you typically only have like a few key words and your communication is very, kind of clunky. Like, we are no je ne veux pas les shows, you know? Like, I don't want the thing. You don't have nuanced vocabulary to express the thing you want to express. I would say that most humans have a deficiency in embodied vocabulary. So it's beginning, the best way I can liken it is to like a sommelier, like someone who is very refined in their palate when it comes to drinking wine. Like you're familiar with this concept. Yeah. It even gets parodied in like comedy where They'll be like, I can smell like dirty socks and rotten apricots. And it's like this big joke, the idea that a person could have their senses so refined that they can pick up on all these kind of wafts of sensory information to the point that they might know the soil that it was grown in. It's great. Side note, great show on Apple TV called Drops of God that I love as a horse person because it's showing the refinement of the senses. And it's about winemakers. It's a fictional show. But I love it because this is the air I breathe, is a refinement of sensory information. So this is what horse owners need to have more of. So around the no. Like, I would say even just knowing like how to modulate pressure, if you even work in the realm of pressure, it's also helpful to know there's ways to help a horse move that don't just require pressure. There's targets, there's moving with them when they're already moving. There is, I mean, there's whole other ranges to help a way. To get a horse moving or help a horse move or move with a horse that aren't just pressure. Although I do love pressure. But knowing that pressure doesn't have to be a brute force brought to a body to displace it. That is just so like we are talking like. I don't want to say Neanderthals because as I understand it, Neanderthals were a lot more refined than we realize. We're talking in like three word vocabularies and we need to talk in like thousand word vocabularies. I already mentioned some layers. Gaze is already a pressure. Observing is already a pressure. Proximity is already a pressure, bringing a body closer to a body. You can see how these are shades. Angles of body are already a pressure. Awareness of what my energetic state is as I come close to a body is already a differentiation in pressure. Breathing is already a pressure. Environments that contain, so I've brought them into the indoor arena, that's already a pressure. I've got a halter and lead rope on, that's already a pressure. I've got a bridle and a saddle and a... Tightened up girth, that's already a pressure. I've got other people in the ring and they're kind of agitated bodies. That's a lot of pressure. So notice that these are all layers and gradation of pressure that already exists before we're even applying what we typically think of as pressure, which is I'm going to bring this. Body part to another body part and tell it to move, or I'm going to bring a flag or a stick and wave it in that direction, I'm going to tell it to move. So without me being able to talk about all the specifics of how we even get into no, it would, the main invitation is as a horse person, can you expand your awareness and your gradations of touch, really. Before we talk about pressure, it's touch. Do we even have intelligence of touch? I watch other people, I don't watch other people make out, but I see other bodies touch each other, either on TV or in public. And I sometimes think like, God, that was such a crude, Touch. That was such a crude touch. But then, oh, wait, that's what I would perceive as a crude touch. But the other body seems to like that touch. You know, I've been watching Love on the Spectrum. It's very interesting to see when they touch because notoriously autism often comes with... Aversions to touch. And so it can be interesting to watch certain bodies touch other bodies. And to know there's not just one right and wrong way. You know, there's from some of my own colleagues who I respect very much, there's a lot out there around like never use a whip or don't even use pressure. And I go, maybe, but do we not have any like that would be like saying don't ever touch another person. Like, is there... A field of awareness that can discern gradations of touch and then read, does this other body seem to be receptive to my touch or are they perceiving my touch as threat? Do I use threat as my primary vocabulary or do I have a form of pressure that isn't actually pressure, it's touch, and do I have a type of touch that is perceived by the body that I'm touching as one where the body clamps up and braces and gets really stiff in its movement or gets defensive and hard and fighty or shuts down and avoids or does when I touch, do when I touch, does that body... Receive the touch as a welcome, helping force that can help unlock some of the stickiness and some of the holdings that inevitably build up in any body. So I could talk about technique, but I think it's better to just invite people to think. in this layered forms of bodies coming together and that what exact form you're going to use and how much or how little, because I definitely am very interested in modulating pressure. I'm interested in being like an orchestra conductor with another body, although I, in my version, the orchestra gets to, more like a jazz trio, the orchestra gets to lead sometimes. But do I have dual awareness of what I'm bringing to my side of the touch? And also, am I constantly kind of calculating how that other body seems to be receiving the touch? And can I trust that there's a form of that calculation that doesn't just need to live from books or high education, that it just comes from understanding things like softness, hardness, fastness, slowness, sharpness, avoiding. Opening. Coming closer. Does that make sense? We know this vocabulary. But we're, our culture, our horse culture, doesn't teach it enough and doesn't slow things down enough for us to be in that field. Of awareness and observing and of calculating both sides of the conversation and to not be getting it right and to be bumping around and not getting it right sometimes. I had to go through a long process, it's still in there a little bit, of deconditioning when people would watch my lessons. And knowing that they're wearing the gaze of mainstream equestrian sport and going, but she's not getting it to do this thing yet. Like, where's the leg yield? Where's the half pass? Where's the beautiful movements? And me going, I care way more about the quality of the interaction that takes place when one body touches another. Do the bodies, are they like contented sighs to each other's touch versus... Look at all the cool things I can make this horse do, but that horse is in brace and contraction and a little bit of fear and a lot of stress. And I just can't wait till this is over. Until we start valuing the quality, the sensory quality of the interaction between the two bodies and not the task outputs. What can these bodies do? What cool things can you impress me with? Then we're never going to understand. Pressure and how to use it. Does that make sense?

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:20:46-01:20:57]
I don't know if you meant to do this or not, but you just like, beautifully brought that full circle to the very beginning of the conversation.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:20:58-01:21:00]
It doesn't always happen, but that's great when it does.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:21:02-01:21:47]
It's been like this, like, as like, kind of like the act of observer of this. It's been like this beautiful conversation arc that just brought it all around to full circle. And I'm so excited for our listeners to be able to, to hear that because yes, it absolutely made sense. And it also was concrete, but a layered concreteness, you know? So rather than step A, step B, step C, there was like the theory involved. So, and to me, that's what helps create the deeper understanding rather than step A, step B, step C with no foundation.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:21:47-01:23:32]
Yes. Yeah. And like the empowerment here is for owners to play with the kind of qualitative details that I'm inviting them to play with. And then if the play gets them in stuck points, then make note of the stuck points. Hopefully by then, just like in the same way that you say you're a good observer and then you share those observations with your farrier or with your osteopath. So collect as much information, get to the stuck points, make a picture of the stuck points, and then bring that to, then that's where you're best going to be served by someone like me. Not by coming to me and saying, I have no idea what I'm doing, tell me how to do it. It's, I already am a good observer. I've already done all these things with my horses, but here's where I'm getting stuck. Can you help me make sense of it? This little stack point. And I mean, I can help someone at any point in there, but in the same way that I want horses with some agency, I want students with a lot of agency that are already experimenting quite a bit. So hopefully your listeners take that invitation to experiment in the qualitative. Try to let go of that mainstream horse lens that is like, this is how it has to be. And if it doesn't look like this, then you're doing it wrong. And if you're repeatedly getting into the same ruts, then indeed, find someone to help you. But hopefully they can help you in a place where they're not going to say, this is how it has to be. And I'm going to show you how it has to be. And they're more coming from the field of let's both of us look at all this information you've collected. And let's bring your horse into the conversation. And let's take all that information. Let's see what we can do with it. To me, that's how, that's why I'm not calling it training much anymore. This is how my sessions look now.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:23:33-01:23:47]
I love it. We have four rapid fire questions and then I'd love for you, I'd love for you to promote yourself and let our listeners know. Yeah. Okay. So first one is, do you have a motto or favorite saying?

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:23:48-01:24:01]
I'm always being caught saying, ride the rhythm. And riding doesn't have to just mean riding. We're riding the rhythm in all aspects of life. Find the rhythm, feel the rhythm, then ride the rhythm. Yeah.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:24:02-01:24:05]
Who has been the most influential person in your question? journey.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:24:07-01:24:29]
I'm going to give initials here because there's times where I've been critical of my past and but also celebratory of my past. So I don't want to call anyone out in the event that at other times I've been critical of certain things. So I'm just going to say RK and LA. They deserve a lot of credit for who I am now. Even if I've evolved in different directions.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:24:30-01:24:34]
If you could give equestrians one piece of advice, what would it be?

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:24:37-01:24:43]
Pay more attention. Slow down. Slow down and observe. Yeah.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:24:44-01:24:49]
And the last one, please complete this sentence. For me, horses are...

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:24:54-01:25:29]
here to remind us what it is to be a creature of the earth. They're ambassadors of the earth, of the land. And we forget that about ourselves. We were supposed to be some of the guardians of the land as well. And we've really forgotten. We're off in space, sometimes literally, with a rocket supposed to be going around the moon right now. We're earth beings and we're forgetting how to be earth beings. And horses definitely know how to help us be earth beings again.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:25:30-01:25:37]
I love that. All right, Shana, please promote yourself. Where can people find you? How can they work with you? All of the things.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:25:37-01:26:30]
Yeah, so online, I do a lot of posting on Instagram. I'm Humming Horse. If you just type in Humming Horse, you're probably going to find me. I think it's Humming Horse underscore SB right now. My website is humminghorse.com. I have a sub stack that you'll find connected to either of those outlets where I write about not just horse stuff. I get more into earth-based stuff there. I really hope to be coming out with the second version of my course. It used to be called Cleaning Up the Contact Zone, and now it will just be called Contact Zone. I hope it's coming out this year, but I do things in my own time and I don't rush myself. So it will come out when it comes out. So I mostly do one-on-ones that you can book through my website, but that online course should be available for asynchronous learning.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:26:31-01:26:45]
Awesome. We're going to put everything in the show notes. So if you're listening and you're interested, just scroll down and you'll be able to just simply click on the links. Thank you so much for sharing everything with us today, Shannon. I've really enjoyed this conversation.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:26:45-01:26:47]
Yeah. Thanks for holding the space for this.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:26:49-01:27:23]
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Equestrian Connection podcast by WeHorse. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a rating and review, as well as share us on social media. You can find us on Instagram at wehorse underscore USA and check out our free seven day trial on wehorse.com where you can access over 175 courses with top trainers from around the world in a variety of topics and disciplines. Until next time, be kind to yourself, your horses, and others.