Paula Curtis (00:34)
welcome everybody. We are so glad to have you here as we chat live with Rachel Bettingfield. Now a brief introduction to Rachel. She's one of the foremost teachers of positive horse training in the world.
She has been researching and teaching about equine wellbeing and training for 25 years. In 2006, she began to focus on two areas of horsemanship, positive reinforcement training and rider biomechanics. She had fallen and broken her back two years previously, and these two streams came together, helping her train horses to be safer and herself to be more balanced and secure. Her fascination with the learning process and overcoming fear brought her to study the neuroscience of emotions.
led by the work of Jack Pencep. This helped her develop a unique approach and understanding of equine behavior and well-being. She developed her own approach to confidence building, which has enabled her to help more people overcome their own fear and insecurity and create confident relationships with their horses. So welcome, Rachel. Thanks coming. Thanks for being here.
And then for those of you that don't know us, my name is Paula Curtis and this is my husband, Jack Curtis, and we are founders of the Horseman Online Horse Fair. So Rachel, we were just talking about your, so just so everyone knows, we got together just briefly before hopping on here live on Facebook. And we were talking about Rachel's lifestyle, which is so cool. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what you've got
going on right now in your life with your horses and your various farms and that sort of thing? Yes, I'm very, very lucky. As I said to Paul, I'm living the life of my dreams at the moment, and it's possibly the life of quite a few people, people's dreams who are watching tonight, I would think. So basically at the moment, I'm in Spain, in southern Spain, because it's winter and it's lovely and warm in southern Spain. So I've been training horses in my t-shirt today and it's really cool and relaxed because
Five years ago, I used some of my pension money to invest in a property in Spain and created a residential training center. We've rescued horses out of the meat market. And so we've got a little farm here and we have a lovely villa and people come here for usually a week at a time to come and train with the horses and learn positive reinforcement. And then I'm from the UK and I have a farm in
the north of England in a place called Yorkshire. And I've lived there for 20 years on the farm. so my niece and her husband have moved on to the farm, which is important for me because A, keeps my farm going, but B, I've got four old horses there still that they look after. And we might mention one or two of those today because they've been with me all the way on the journey.
in partnership in connection training, which is an online training resource with my daughter, Hannah, Hannah Weston and Hannah moved to France to the Pyrenees a year ago and she took our four younger horses. So I have basically, you know, a share in four horses in France and four in the UK and six in Southern Spain. there's somebody younger than me who's there all the time to look after them. And I just get to travel around following good weather.
and play with horses wherever I go. So pretty good, pretty good way. It's called living the life. Definitely living the life. I'm very happy to do it. Yeah, how cool. And you all, you know that's the hard part when you're going places is knowing your horses are in good hands. And I'm sure a lot of our viewers can relate to that because it's so important to us that our horses are taken care of very well.
but also that the people that are taking care of them aren't building in bad habits and behaviors or feelings in their emotions because of nervousness and that sort of thing. And that makes a big difference in the horse's lives. So you're getting to come back to them and they're still happy and fresh and- Yeah, and in some cases, like my daughters, I go there and my highland pony has been trained. So she's even better than she was last time I left.
Yeah, that's excellent. definitely. You know, think breeding your own horse trainer, having your having your child becoming a very good horse trainer is quite a good, good guide to life. For sure. For sure. So tell us a little bit about your, your journey. So you had an accident that has that has since shaped how you're showing up.
for your horses, for yourself and in your teaching. Yes, I think it was a very significant milestone on the way, but it wasn't the first one. And I think I'm a born again horsewoman. am one of those very strange children. And again, I'm sure a lot of people will relate who was this complete horse nut from birth.
born into a townie, non-horsey family and nobody could understand what was going on and what this was all about. And we didn't have any money in those days. And people who had horses in those days were very rich. And so I might get a riding lesson as a Christmas present or a birthday present. So I was one of those kids that hung out at the stables all the time and clean tack and mucked out stables in order to be allowed to get a bareback ride at the end of the day, taking the ponies back to the field.
that sort of background. of course, I'm, you know, at the age I am, and that was, I went to university in the mid seventies and there were no equine studies degrees or anything in those days. But I did manage to do a degree in agriculture. So at least it was kind of the first, you know, the nearest thing to horses. But I didn't do anything with horses from about the age of 16 until Hannah came along and it turned out that she also was
you know, one of these, you know, born horse nuts. But it wasn't me that introduced her to horses, actually. She was just invited to a birthday party where there were pony rides when she was age three. And that was her, you know, just, just thought that she became the kid that hung out at the stables. So when she was 10, my husband and I decided that we could see the talent that she had and the gift that she had with horses and the passion. And we knew that by that time she'd run out of
things at the riding school. She'd gone as far as she could at a riding school. So it's time to buy her a pony. And so for her 11th birthday, we bought her a Toby. And we still have Toby. So 24 years later, he is living at fantastic retirement on the farm in Yorkshire. And he is the one who just basically led us all the way on our journeys.
And he is the one that in 2004 I fell off of and broke my back. He obviously decided I needed another lesson. need my learning needed to go to another level. So in a sense, Toby has been the horse that has led us all the way down the track from being some, you know, a kind of very enthusiastic, but very, very ignorant horse owner.
to eventually becoming an equine professional. So he's the one I give all the credit to. So what was the big lesson that Toby taught you? And maybe it was more than one big lesson, but is there something that you really take away from having a horse like him? Yes, he doesn't suffer fools at all. And if you know something, he will very quickly tell you, your ego has gone too far.
Very good. He's wonderful because I've had, you if you put a child on him or somebody with, I had a friend with a disability, it was desperate to ride and to get to know horses. And he treated her, honestly, he treated her like he was carrying a tray of expensive glass. He could not have been gentler and softer. But I got a little bit of ideas above my station. I began to think I was somebody, we'd had him probably for about five or six years then.
And, you know, and I was going to clinics and I was doing all this great stuff and I'd started teaching and that thought, you know, I thought I knew everything. And I just think that's the point when he thought, well, do you know about this? And I didn't. So I came off and unfortunately it wasn't a terribly bad break, but did actually break my back, which I recovered from physically much, much more quickly than I did psychologically.
It's interesting. It was due, think, don't we? And yeah, I had had an accident and, you know, in a similar situation where I probably had a lesson I needed to learn. Anyway, when you have injuries, those fear responses come up in very strange ways. Like I would be riding on, we had a like a little four wheeled gator, John Deere Gator, and you'd go over a bump a certain way and it would
trigger the nerves. And all of a sudden, I had this fear welling up and there's no reason to be scared. But it was that that's down to that cellular memory that was that was bringing that up. Can you tell us a little bit about how the neuroscience works into those those fear responses that we might get? Yeah. Well, fear is there to keep us safe. Absolutely powerful emotion, one of the most powerful, one of the most primitive.
And fear in where where fear is sensed in the brain, if you like, and it's very, very deep in the brain. I'm pointing to the back of my head here. It's very deep in the brain at the back. But it's just on the other side of where pain is registered as well. So this kind of like pain comes up from the lower body and then fear just sits on top of it. And they've they they're very related neurochemically.
So that's why you can use pain medication, for example, can help with people with fear problems. fear is there to keep you safe and fear is there to basically, if you learn something through fear, which is what we both did, with your accident and my accident, the learning that took place in that moment, the emotion of fear that was attached to that learning is so powerful.
And it's not cognitive learning. It's not like learning maths or something. It's learned absolutely. I'm sure at a cellular level, it's certainly learned in your gut. And that's why when we're frightened, we get butterflies and our guts start to turn and so on and so forth. Because the gut is known as the second brain. And maybe it's probably the first brain. It was probably there before this law appeared, even evolutionary terms. So when you've experienced
something very painful and very fearful and very shocking. Your body is set up to anticipate that and prevent it happening again. anything that triggers that memory and your memory is really interesting and they're finding out loads more about memory. So when you remember something, you don't remember it as one whole package. Your visual cortex remembers the things you saw.
and your motor cortex remembers things you feel and your auditory cortex remembers what you heard at the time and obviously what the scents were and so on. So all your senses have a part to play in that memory. And so when you were in your gator and you went over the bump and you had that sensation in your body, everything else in your brain went, it's that happening again.
You know, it's happening again. it just, mean, when you feel like that, we all know it overwhelms the brain completely, doesn't it? You can't think of anything else. It's just the whole focus of your brain is to keep you safe because you were in danger. So it's a fascinating thing, because learning, whenever a brain learns something, there's always emotion attached to it. And so if you have a very big,
learning experience, where it was big pain, big fear, there'll be a lot of fear attached to it. And that comes into how we train horses, because then when we're training horses, their brains are learning. And so we've got to think about, well, what are the emotions that are being attached to this thing I'm teaching at the moment? Is it fear? Is it joy? You know, what's the emotional state of the horse while they're learning? So in that instance, it's
it correlates well between humans and horses that we have this sort of I don't want to say emotional memory, because that's probably oversimplifying it. But we do have this, where we will always remember it. And so will the horse. And they're very emotional. And that ties into hormones and certain hormones being released, right? So, but tell us maybe how are humans and horses different with that interaction between, you know, sort of their nervousness, their fear.
and the hormones. That's a really, really good question. basically, when I talk about brains, I'm talking about the brains of mammals, because all mammals share basically the same brain structure and chemistry and definitely share the same emotional systems. And so an emotional system is is both the physical architecture, as it's called, of the brain, but also as you talk about the chemicals that are released.
and whether they make the brain feel good or make the brain feel bad, if you like, and also the neurotransmitters and the pathways that are in the brain. So that's why it's called a system and not just an emotion, because there's a lot attached to it. And so the work of Jaap Panksepp, who I've studied, now the neuroscientists are, they're all working on the small print at the moment. So you could pick six different neuroscientists and they would give you different answers to.
the detail of what they think the structure is. But if we take the work of Jak Panksepp, who is such an important pioneer in this work, he identified seven emotional systems that all mammals share. And they're good enough for us as horse trainers. And maybe another neuroscientist will say there's eight and maybe another will say there's six, but let them argue that out. We can go with the flow. And what happens with animals, with evolution and brains is that
those systems can be more or less switched on. So for example, the rage system is for aggression and a carnivore that has to hunt prey and kill animals will have a very easily activated rage system because it's part of hunting for prey. But a predator is part of a predator's hunting, but a prey animal like a horse and
who's evolved to run away from danger, what they have is a highly sensitized fear system. And we know this, don't we? Horses, you know, they run first and think later. It's what we always say. The scared of something that moves and the scared of something that stays still. And that's one of the quite significant differences between people and horses, absolutely in the depth of our brain, is that we will be less triggered to be frightened by something. We will think about it for a bit longer.
we'll stand a little bit longer and think, is it something to worry about or will it be safe where a horse has gone? And of course, that creates one of the biggest problems we have in doing what we want to do, because, you know, when the horse that's what happened, why I broke my back, something spooked him and he was gone. And unfortunately, I was still in the same place like in a car. I occupied the space he had been occupying. So it's understanding.
Another very important difference between humans and horses is horses are herd animals. So the system that would promote that in the brain is called the care system. So the care system promotes bonding and we all know about say oxytocin, know, the cuddle hormone. So horses must have very highly activated oxytocin in their systems. All that mutual grooming, all that standing together, swatting flies off each other, everything they do.
that brings them together and keeps them together is going through this care system. Now we are social mammals, but we're not quite as social mammals. We also enjoy our own company. We also have a desire to go and explore. We're not great in solitary confinement, but we're better than horses are. So another big problem we have with managing horses and doing what we want to do is we just want to take our horse out for a ride on our own with our horse.
and our horse doesn't want to go because they want to stay with their horses and because their brain is telling them this is what you do to be a horse. And so it becomes quite a big training job to enable their brain, in my view, to accept us as a suitable companion. I think that's what happens. I don't think we can switch off that system or switch it down, but I think luckily it is a system that can transfer to other species.
And so eventually your horse can say, yeah, I'm happy to go with you. I trust you. I know you'll keep me safe and we're okay together. But I'm not going with that person over there. I've never met, you know, forget it. So that's why we get this amazing bond with our horses. Interesting. That is interesting. Yeah. And I think that's so key in our understanding of the horse is we need, and it's not necessarily becoming a member of their herd.
but taking place of their other herd mates in that same way where they feel the security in being with us. And once we can gain that, it makes everything else so much easier. But we have to, there's the time factor too with horses, right? You know, it's not an instant thing. that doesn't, us humans, especially nowadays, everything is, you know, now, now, now. And horses, that's not there.
I cannot believe how long it takes to train horses to, if you do it properly in the sense of, without fear and force, with saying to them, this will be okay, trust me, we'll do this, we'll do this, we'll do this. You have absolutely got to love the process and the journey. If you are trying to achieve the results next week, know, basically, definitely take a different system from what I teach.
And it was funny because you said, you know, what sort of life lessons, you know, we were talking earlier that I've learned from horses and I'm a very impatient person by nature and I've got this great big, you know, massive brain so I can see what the answer is immediately, you know, I can just jump straight to the answer. And that doesn't help with horse training at all. My life lesson from horses is that, you know, consistent tiny steps.
get you to anywhere virtually that you can go that you will get there. And that has been a very long, hard lesson for me to learn. And I really think it's only now when I've, you know, I'm in my sixties, I've got time and space that I didn't have in my forties. I, you know, I really wanted quick fixes and silver bullets, which is why you fall off horses and break your back. Cause I was trying to get a quick fix. That's when those lessons come in.
Yeah, I I'd solve that one. So talk to us a little bit about sort of the role of, well, the sort of the environmental, the care factor, how we raise our horses, how much movement our horses get. Tell us a little bit about sort of the correlation between, you know, let's say environment, turnout, so forth, and our horses and their emotional.
Again, it's a really good question. So we say that horses need three things, freedom, forage and friends. And movement physiologically for horses, movement is so important. And I know this will be being dealt with in great detail in some of other great things. But if we just think about one thing only, mentioning that I did visit Tennessee once, in 2004, I did the most amazing trip across the southern states with two friends.
they were training to become hoof trimmers, barefoot hoof trimmers, and I was interested in it but I went along for the ride and I was at that time, I'd started a horse feed business where I was selling forage-based feeds and it was at the time in the UK where you could hardly buy anything that didn't have molasses and cereals and so on in it, so it was quite a pioneering company that I was selling their feed and I was very interested in then, I thought you know let's see how other people
keep their horses and feed their horses and so on. So I went for the ride and had a very interesting time. So I studied a lot about hooves and horses hooves are little mini hearts. They do not have the facility to pump blood and lymph up and down their long legs because their legs are the ends of our fingers and we don't have muscles in there either. That's why our fingers get cold. Circulation is poor and horses actually need to move simply to move.
the blood and the lymph up and down their legs, simply to be healthy. If you have a horse that stands in a stable all night, you get filled legs. So physiologically, they need to move. And if they're not moving, then they will start not to feel very good. And the body's response to not feeling very good is yet again, to start to highlight that fear system a little bit. When we're ill, we feel fearful because there's something wrong and we aren't in our best.
shape to survive and thrive and live a good life. So the idea about what they eat, the forage that they need to eat so they haven't got an over acid gut, they need to be eating the right kind of food, they need the movement and of course they need the friends. All of those things make a horse relaxed. And from connection training viewpoint, we think relaxation is the most important thing.
It's the starting point. So when people join connection training and they start to look at our program, one of the first things they do is try and find the place where their horse is most relaxed, where they can be with their horse where they're most relaxed. And when a horse lives in a stable herd, has lots and lots of turnout, has an adequate diet, good forage-based diet, has friends around, then basically you've got the right
medium to start working with them. They're going to be relaxed and chilled. They're emotionally going to be able to connect with you and to build that bond. Their brain is going to be in the right place to learn things and to understand what you're asking. And then physically, they're going to be in the right place to condition their muscles and their bodies correctly. And, you know, if, if they're in a situation where they are very stressed, where they're
being given a high sugar diet, for example, where they don't get that turnout they need, so they're just not feeling good, then you're starting to try and train something, an animal, which isn't in its best condition. And you might see something like, you know, a common thing perhaps to see in the UK certainly would be somebody who takes their stable horse into the arena and lunges them around for 15, 20 minutes, you know, just to get that.
excessive energy out of them. And what you're actually seeing is a horse that's running around in circles, you know, with tense muscles, with a tense mind, with a tense mouth. And that's just no good. It's not conditioning the muscles correctly. In fact, it's incorrectly working the horse. And of course, it's not helping the brain. You know, the brain is not in the right place. So relaxation is the most important thing. And you create
starting relaxation by giving your horse the best lifestyle you can. Now, most of us can't give our horses an ideal lifestyle. I can't, and I keep horses in three different countries and three different places. The biggest challenge is movement, I think, and that is the biggest, biggest challenge for all of us, I think. Certainly horses are, you know, standing around either eating hay from a, you know, feeder.
or they've got lovely green grass at their feet, getting adequate movement is our biggest challenge, I think. But everything else, I think we can solve fairly easily. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, when horses are, say, say kept in at night and then they've got sort of this buildup that they're going to get taken out of their stall to a corral or a paddock and they're happy and they're excited and they want to get there. But let's say it's a, you know, there's a barn.
person that's handling the horse and that their specialty is not horse handling, right? So then every day, sort of the habitual buildup of emotion, and then the human is now handling the horse at a time where the horse really is hard to handle. Right? And then all of a sudden, over time, we've got this every day. So I, I tend to, we get a lot of questions about turnout. Yeah. And so my big thing is breaking patterns or breaking, breaking the routine.
so that the horse isn't always getting turned out the same time every day or, but do you have any other tips to horses that sort of have to be in at night and then turned out during the day? Because we sure get that question a lot, don't we? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think first of all, people, know, if the horse is getting good turnout during the day with friends and they're on the right diet, I'm not gonna say that keeping them in at night is bad. I think it's when they end up being in 24 seven,
you know, day after day after day, it really isn't fair. But I think if you're getting them out during the day and they've got friends and they've got the right kind of diet, you're 80 % of the way there. And also if you are then in position to exercise them. And I am a great fan of trail riding or hacking, as we would call it, riding out because it is so natural for a horse to know their own environment, to, you know, to ride out from where they live.
to explore the environment, to go and smell the poos that are there, to eat the forages and so on and so forth. So I think again, if you are in the position either to walk your horse out or to ride your horse out and you can give them that opportunity to explore their environment and you don't spend the whole time trying to keep them in a dressage frame and stop them being horses, then I think you can again do an awful lot for them and their lives will be very good.
But I do agree with you. think routine can be a blessing. Routine can relax a brain, if you like. I often talk about a brain because that's really what we're training. So, you know, it could relax a horse or relax a horse's brain because they know what to expect. But then if the routine is one where there's a lot of stress built into the routine, then you're having routine stress. So therefore you might say it's better, as you think, not to have a routine.
so that they learn to go, well, okay, I'll just stay in my stable and then eventually somebody will appear. And certainly the way that I've always kept my horses, I've never had regular feeding times. I don't have those routines because I've never had a routine life. So, basically, it might be 10 o'clock at night when I feed you today and it might be three o'clock in the afternoon when I feed you tomorrow, but the routine of feeding is always the same.
So they come and stand in their places and get their buckets and so on. And the actual routine of the process is the same, but the time of day will vary. And they've adapted to that extremely well. But what can you do if you have got a horse that is in a box more than you'd like it to be? Well, one of the things is brain games with your horse. if you, you know, I obviously do everything with positive reinforcement, but you don't have to.
You can do everything that you do normally, but then you could add in a session before you leave the barn at night where you say start to teach your horse to distinguish colors. Can your horse tell the difference between yellow and blue? Can you get them to touch the blue cone or the yellow cone? Can you play a bit of fetch with them so they're picking up a fetch toy like a dog and bringing it back to you and giving it to you? Can you train them to put a hula hoop over their head?
Can you do a little bit of scent training so that they learn to find the scent of lavender in a jar and you hide it in their stall and they have to go and touch it and find it. And you could do that. wouldn't touch anything else that you do with the horse the rest of the time, but that will help tire them out and relax them and make it easier for them to go through the night and to actually, you, when you leave, you're leaving a horse that's actually quite ready for you to go now because I'm tired, my brain's tired.
Now I'll just go to my hang that and eat and they process that. it's definitely finding something that you can do with them that gets them very engaged mentally before you leave is a great exercise to do to help in those situations or a horse that's on box stall rest, box rest, those sort of things help. Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I love how, you know, through doing those tasks, you're building in communication and conversation with your horse and
spending some time doing something that might be very interesting to them. so, yeah. And it often makes us smile because it's not our goal. This isn't going to win the rosette at the next week's competition, but you can bring your mum along and say, hey, mum, look, look at my horse. You can do this. It makes us smile and be happy around horses. And we've absolutely got the evidence now from trials that horses respond
very positively to smiley faces and respond with fear to angry frowning faces. So, know, anything that makes you smile and be relaxed around your horse is a great thing to do. So they get a bit of time with you at your best, if you like, not when you're worrying about winning. Right. Or even just getting there. Never mind winning, just getting to the show is often the biggest worry everybody has. Yeah. So...
you know, in your travels, because you've been to many different countries, and I'm sure through that you've met some pretty interesting horsemen and even people in other fields that have kind of helped you grow along your journey. Can you tell us a little bit about maybe who some of the, you know, those people might have been and, and what lessons have they taught you? Yeah, absolutely. And just amazing. I've had an amazing education.
and regarded it as a doctorate basically, what my horsey education has been. So we got into horses, we got Toby, we bought a pony from a very good woman and he could do everything. He was the perfect child's pony when we got him and within six months we couldn't do anything because Toby had worked out we didn't know what we were doing. We wouldn't load, he wouldn't travel, we couldn't put a bridle on, he would buck Hannah off, it was just nightmare.
That led us to education and skill development. Took us first into natural horsemanship, which was brilliant. And then it took me, because I'm this egghead, you know, I'm all brain. I started reading about horse psychology and horse behavior. And I wanted to bring, a lot of people around the world won't have heard of her, but the British people will, a woman called Marta Kylie Worthington.
who wrote a book called The Behavior of Horses many, moons ago. I think she's in her seventies now. But I read her book and was very inspired by her work because she had done very good scientific work looking at the bonding and the relationship in horse herds. So was kind of the opposite of what I was being taught in terms of, you know, the horse must respect you and keep his distance. This was saying, well, actually most of horse behavior is about friendliness and togetherness. So I was very keen.
to work with her. So I just thought, well, how do I do this? I'll have to host a clinic. And that began me hosting clinics for about 15 years, because if I wanted to work with these great practitioners, I had to bring them from America and Australia and Europe to the UK so I could work with them with my horses, because I wanted to work with my horses with the practitioner. So you bring them to your place, don't you?
And so many, many good practitioners and I went to a lot of clinics in order to the lot of clinics. But one of the ones I'd like to mention, because we talked about me getting into the biomechanics of riding and so on. So I had the accident in 2004 when I broke my back and a part of my recovery.
I discovered Tai Chi for equestrians and I started to work with James Shaw who you might know in the States. I started to bring him over to the UK because when you asked what is my because of the horse, my because of the horses, I finally became at one with myself because what happened was in the very first clinic with James and the very first, and at that time I couldn't stand for more than about 20 minutes because of my back.
recovery. was 2006, so it two years later. I still couldn't stand for more than about 20 minutes before I'd have to sit down. And so I carried a seat stick around with me everywhere I went. So we started this Tai Chi clinic and I said to James, I organized, said to James, I'll just get the chairs. And he said, you won't need chairs. And I said, I need a chair. And he said, you won't need a chair. And I'm going, I'm having a chair, but you you've got the new practitioner, you're the host.
You don't start arguing if you're practitioner, do you? Okay, I thought right, I'll start it. And the first exercise simply was to stand there and feel where the weight was in your feet. And it was like every light in my brain connected because I had never in my life done such a simple exercise. Sounds crazy, but I'm an egghead, I'm a brain box. Everything was up here. So although I had written...
horses and so on. I'd never really connected in that way with what was happening. I'd done the heels down, elbows in, but it was all very external, if you like. And that first exercise with James on that first day was connecting internally. And he actually quoted in his book as saying, you know, to be at one with your horse, you must first be at one with yourself, which I think is the
profound statement of the century. So I kind of went, you know, no wonder I can't turn in a right circle because of the way my body is and my weight distribution is and so on. So I think he was very, very influential. I worked with him for five years, I ran three clinics a year in the UK for him and worked very, very hard and rode at every clinic and so on to come into my body.
basically. And so it is because of that work. And then the work on the emotional side, I think that because of horses, I've put those things together and really feel that, you know, this is one system now, the brain and the body and the emotion is one system. And I feel that then when I'm with horses or when I'm riding, I can key into that and I can tap into that. So I think he was a very important influencer for me.
Well, that's a great story. Did you need a chair? Did you need a chair? I wasn't allowed. You didn't pull it out at once during that clinic. That's great. Horses, feel where our mind is, they feel where our body is. And if there's a disconnect there, they really feel that because that's not, you know, that's that's not normal. So that brings up some emotion in them. I think that really scares horses. Yeah.
really scares them. I think, and we all know that if we can just ground ourselves and take a deep breath and get the breath down, the horse just goes, you know, and you know, again, there's been some very good scientific work done in the last five years that shows that our heart rates match. and, the horses often are the ones who, you know, I think they are more empathic than we are. ⁓ empathy scientifically is your body system.
unconsciously reacting to another body system. Okay, so heart rate, blood pressure, smiley muscles in your face, all of these things. And I think horses are even more empathic because we know they are so well attuned, their body language and their body communication. And I think recently there was research done that showed that horses actually have more facial muscles than chimpanzees.
So even though to us, I think we might say a chimpanzee is more expressive, horses can be, their expression is so subtle that we can't pick it up very easily and read it. We pick up the gross communication. So I always think when you see half a dozen horses with their heads down grazing and they're working their way across the field and they're sort of a little pair here and little ones there, there's a whole soap opera going on between them.
And we see the ears flicking and we see the eyes flicking and we see a little bit of the mouth getting a bit tense and maybe a little bit of a look saying, away from me or an invitation to come in or whatever. But I think we miss half the story that's going on. I think they're just chattering away to each other all the time. So they pick up from us so strongly. learning to smile is such an important thing to do. And I have a very friendly, concentrated face when I'm training.
You know, so I've had to consciously learn to smile and be relaxed. had to consciously learn to ground and to breathe deeply and to feel my seat bones properly. And it's, you know, again, it was it was hard thought learning for me that is not is not natural. And so I do feel that when I'm teaching people, I know I can teach feel because I had to learn it.
I have no natural feel whatsoever. And I do look at someone like my daughter who has natural born feel. And, you know, I envy, you know, her with horses, the way animals just melt when she appears. It's wonderful. But I'm OK now. I can get where I can get to and it's fine. you know, we work it out. But it has been...
a learned thing for me, it's not been a natural talent, unfortunately. But then I know I can teach people it. So, I I always think about giving somebody an actual exercise to do with their horse or maybe even taking them trail riding so that they can sort of go with their horse and feel together. But do you have any other tips on kind of getting horses and people to kind of mesh together and feel together? Because the human's very analytical.
And then like you said, where humans late or they sit there and they think longer than the horse does and the horse does react and the person's, you So do you have any tips to sort of bringing that together? Yeah, I think the one or two ideas, I'm trying to bring them down at the moment. My brain's just about to give you 16. Hesitation is a filing system going, ooh, what's the easiest? I will give three, okay.
So the first one is belly breathing. Learn how to breathe into your belly. When you breathe, feel the back of your belt tighten so that you're really opening up your back. That's how to open up your back. A good way to practice that is just to bend over as if you're trying to touch your toes and then just take a deep breath in and you will feel, because you've compressed your tummy, your...
back has to expand and that's the feeling you want to get in the saddle and that will help your horse, that helps your horse lift behind the saddle in the sacroiliac joint and really helps them lift and engage their core as well. So that is one exercise I would do. You can learn that at any Pilates yoga class that you can go to. can just put it on online and say, you you can learn it through singing, diaphragmatic breathing for singing.
So sing when you're on your horse and breathe in that way and it will help your horse to do that. Another really cool thing that you can do. So you're riding your horse, you've got on, you can feel you're a bit tight and a bit tense. Wiggle your toes and your boots. So it's not wiggling the whole foot. The whole foot isn't going up and down, it's just your toes. Like your toes are playing a trumpet or something. That will bring your mental connection down to your feet. So it's very holistic.
but it also releases your hips. And it also can become a very good stop cue. So say you've got quite a fidgety horse, even say you're standing on the ground and your horse is bit fidgety, think about your weight in your feet and just play with your toes that way on the ground, wiggle them on the toes, and it will really help to grind you. And it's a very simple cognitive exercise to do. You know, can just, it's easy to think about, just think, right, okay, then I'm here, my horse is dancing around like a loon.
I'll just wiggle my toes and it really will help to ground you and you can do it in the saddle as well and it just helps to release your hips a little bit. It's a magic one that one, it's great. And then the third one is synchrony with your horse and I know other practitioners talk about it too. One of my great heroes is a woman called Lucy Reese, who's another UK equine behaviorist and she has done fantastic studies of feral horses.
and looked at horses when they're galloping as a herd and the way that they synchronize their movement. And it's just like birds in flight or fishes in a shoal. And they respond incredibly well to you synchronizing with them. So if you're walking with your horse, just match their front legs with your legs. So right four, left four, your right leg, left leg. Just concentrate on matching with your horse. And that really helps them to relax and
feel that you are in some way a bit of a bond with them because that's what they do naturally. I've had my story about that. One of the horses I've rescued was an Arab who turned out to have had a very wonky foot and it turned out that, you know, he's been past to sound but he's never been properly sound. We've had him for 20 years. And he always grazed with his left four out in front. So he kind of hobbledy-hoid his way down the field.
And then for Hannah's 21st birthday, we bought her an 18 month old sport horse prospect, And India, Kal, this gelding, and India just bonded. He was her sugar daddy. So we brought this perfectly fit 18 month old mare into the field. They bonded, and within a week, she was grazing with her left four out in front and hobbledy-hoying her way across the field. Because she bonded with him and she synchronized with him.
is such a strong thing that they do. So you synchrony and of course we do that in riding. That's what we're doing with our seat bones. We're synchronizing our seat bones with their hind leg movement. So when you're leading, you can synchronize your feet with their front legs and that helps relax them a lot. Awesome. Great tips. Well, and Paula, know, she really, I do it too, but we'll ask students stretch, you know, sit on their horse and just stretch themselves out to try to get sort of into more of a flowing feeling state.
and going along with the horse as opposed to thinking everything and questioning everything. down, straight, back. Am I doing it right? Did I do that right? I don't know, how did it feel? Yeah, and I really encourage people to find that there's so many people now that are bringing Tai Chi, Pilates, yoga and so on into horsemanship and just study them all, get onto YouTube and study them all and you'll find...
you'll find things that click for you, to use a pun, but things that really work for you that make sense to you. The way I explain engaging your core and opening your back is one way of explaining it. If it's somebody else, they'll explain it differently. you'll find somebody who explains it in a way that works for you so that when you try it, and what to look out for is what's your horse's response? What's the emotional response? And a very, very classic, there's that feel of that lift at the back.
or their head will drop a little bit, or they might start to lick and chew, for example, so they just let go of a bit of tension. So you want to be looking and feeling your horse's response to these things that you try, because when you relax and when you come into a frame and when your posture is good and relaxed, empathy makes them follow that. It's almost like they can't not.
So we have to lead, I teach from Tai Chi the concept of follow match lead. So you start off by following your horse, say you're synchronizing your front legs with your horse, your legs with your horse's front legs. And then you get into this match thing and then you can start to lead it. So then you can start to take a longer stride and your horse will take a longer stride or shorter strides or move out a little bit or whatever. And you can have such good fun.
you know, at Liberty in the field with your horse just playing around with follow match lead and because their empathy is so strong they can't help themselves. They'll do it and it's such, it's magic, it's just wonderful and that's what great horsemen do and a lot of them don't know that's what they're doing but they do it, you know, and you watch somebody and the horse melts underneath them and you think how do they do that? Well,
Those are tricks and the things I've learned how to do it, because it didn't come naturally. And I think for us as humans, once we start experiencing that, because that's really, I think, the reason why all of us are drawn to horses. And what really lights us up with our horses is that connection and just those magical moments. And it doesn't have to be, you know,
doing great on your dressage test or riding the perfect jump course, it's actually the time that you spend just grazing your horse and hanging out with them. And those are the things that you really carry with you and that carry the most meaning for you. And they also probably carry the most meaning for your horse as well. Yes, yes, I think so. And we love them, don't we? There's nothing more magical than when you are so connected with a horse, the horse is so connected with you and you just are together.
you know, it doesn't matter what you're doing. It's the feeling that is everything. And another thing I just wanted to bring in there as well with your horse is that we're talking about these emotional systems. Jak Panksepp, who is the one I have studied most, he really isolated the play system in the brain. And if anybody wants to look at his work, then just Google tickling rats. Okay?
In order to prove this and to do this, he realized that when rats play, they giggle, they laugh, baby rats, but we can't hear it because the sound is too low. So he developed the machinery so that you could hear these rats laugh. And this whole thing about tickling rats, but basically very, very deep, good science based around giving rats, having rats have fun.
And when people look at us doing positive reinforcement, they often say, well, it's bribery. They're just working for the food and so on. And at some level they are. Certainly at the beginning, there is a lot of that. That's how you're finding the way to their heart is through their stomach. But after a while, what you are engaging is the play system. And we know this because they will leave free food.
to come and play with you and come and engage with you. So that's why I love the idea of people just teaching their horses to do different color discrimination, to know their colors, for example. It's playful, it's fun. And obviously we love running around with horses, but we can't really play with them at the level of physical activity that they want to play at. It's a bit too dangerous for us.
But they find a lot of things playful. They like object play. They love picking things up or kicking a ball or nosing a ball or so on. So add a little bit of that into your horse's life as well. You know, when you get off at the end of your, you know, your dressage practice, you know, can you take the tack off, let your horse have a nice roll or run around the arena? Can you get a physio ball out and start playing nose ball with them? And again, you'll build a lovely connection because play is very important and horses
So obviously very young horses are very playful, male horses are very playful, old mares, older mares tend to be less playful, but certainly if you've got young horses or you've got boys, then playing is really, really important. With mares, love being, often love being groomed and scratched, particularly at the base of the withers, and when you do that, you're releasing oxytocin, so you're building the bonding system. So
If you watch a couple of boys play and they do those bitey boy games, you know, they're trying to get each other's legs and so on, often it will end in a mutual grooming session where they are grooming each other's withers. So they've had their play lit up in their brain and they've had all this play, you know, and play fighting stuff. And that has created some bonding and they finish it off with a real bonding session. And that is how they're building these pair bonds.
So we can mimic that, we can play with our horses and we can just stand there and give them a really good wither scratch and get those wonderful gloves that you get nowadays with the claws on them so that you can really get in there. And it's just all these different ways that we can be important to our horses in a way that just builds the relationship and builds the connection. And it doesn't take long to do, it? Five minutes of that at the end of a ride. A lot of people do it anyway, I know.
And a lot of people love playing with their horses, but it's definitely something that to add in quite consciously so that your horse goes, yay, great, fantastic. He looks up when he sees you coming and goes, woo hoo, this is my friend. Yeah. And I think that's what we're all looking for. Definitely. Yeah. And also why it's so important for your horse to have other horses to play with so that they do get to work with, work that system and go through those very, those very athletic
movements, but with another horse, not necessarily with us, right? We can't do it. Yeah, we can't do it. And I just, and sometimes people are so protective of their horses, but they're actually causing harm. And then all of sudden they walk into the paddock and they're, and they're sort of the, the play thing, but not in a way that too much, too much place. So I'm a very, very hot on because of my own concerns about my own safety. I'm very, very hot on horses being very calm around me.
And if I'd set up a robust play system, like with a big ball or something with a... I'm training a four-year-old mule at the moment. I would not get in a haddock with my mule and something like that because he will just go for it, you know. But I can do it from outside the fence. And I can throw the ball in and I can watch him and play. And then when the ball reaches the fence at this side, I can leap in and grab it and jump outside and throw it in again. So I can do it in what's called protected contact. I can do it in safety.
And I can still have that fun with him, but my personal training with my horses is when you're with me, you're calm and relaxed because I've, you know, I've just hurt too many times. And I do love some of the people that do these wonderful and exciting high energy play with their horses. Looks fantastic. But personally, it's not for me because I just want to feel safe around my horses, but I want them to have it in their life.
I'm glad you brought that up because that level of energy isn't for everybody. And so I'm so happy that you're saying that you want your horse in sort of a calm state of mind when, know, I always say no trouble, you know, in my bubble. Yeah, you know, right. And, and, but I mean, there is a time where in training, if you want to call it that, where we do bring up their life and we do bring up their energy a little bit.
And I think that's a hard balance for people. When are they ready for a little more life? But do you have any tips to that? I maybe it's somebody working on dressage movements and they want to bring up their horse's life a little bit more, but sometimes people go overboard. So how do they find a good balance? I think for me in terms of riding, it's come through learning to become at one with my body. So when you're training the transition up,
there is a pre-transition energy, isn't there? There's that point when you've got the trot before you're trotting. And so that's the point when you are still, if you like, in control of the energy. And so it's about being connected all the way through the transition. And mostly we lose the connection in the transition because our brain says, I'm trotting, but we're not. We get a little bit left behind.
because we haven't really felt that energy as it's gone up. to me, it's that I do a lot of work where you're coming up to the transition and then you come back away from it. You come up to the transition and then you come away from it. Really smooth transitions so that they feel very relaxed and very comfortable. And you are, you you've got, for example, your seat bones are connected all the way through that transition. It's same on the ground. We can lose the
connection that we've built because we're thinking about the trot, but we're still in walk. So we're very aware of the emotional response. a connection, for example, if you're on the ground, working with your horse on the ground and you're asking them to go from walk to trot, how do they go from walk to trot? Do they toss their head, pin their ears, flick their tail, or do they gather themselves up and move into a trot correctly?
So if I was working with a horse on the ground, and as I've done many times where I see that that asking for that transition creates tension in the horse, so we get a little bit of a tail swish or whatever, then I'm gonna work on making that transition softer and gentler. So I'm going to work on coming up to the transition. And then in my case, I'm going to reward them, mark and reward for them staying soft with that increase in energy. And so we would come back down to a walk, a halt, you know, have a little relax.
We'd go back up towards that trot and I wouldn't ask for the, or I'd build it so gradually so that the trot comes out of the energy that comes, but the horse has remained relaxed all the way through. So it's back to that relaxation, relaxation thing, because usually the, the, the energy we don't want is unbalanced energy. And when a horse is unbalanced, then again, I think it brings up the fear system.
because that's when they're liable to fall over and become vulnerable. So if you focus very much on your balance and in your transitions and the balanced increased energy, then that energy is lovely and it is the energy we want. It's when we, you know, maybe ask too quickly or too much, or for whatever reason, the horse has got tension in that extra energy. That's what you don't want. So thinking about that softness and that relaxation all the time and how do you...
And tiny back to my tiny steps, know, that tiny increase in energy. Okay, let's come back down to the wall. Tiny increase in energy. Let's come back down to a wall and just build it very slowly in slow steps. And then of course you get a transition that is good for the horse physically. The horse is in the correct shape. Their muscles are relaxed. You know, they will then come onto the bit, whether they're wearing one or not, they'll come into the correct frame. If you're relaxed and soft.
which is what the art of horsemanship has always been, isn't it? I'm not inventing something new here. It's it's always been. Right. Yeah, so true. That's cool. That's really great. Thank you. Yeah, that was good. So how can people find out more about you and Hannah and your program and that sort of thing? The best thing is to whizz along to connectiontraining.com. Okay.
And on connection training, we have tons and tons and tons of video pages and pages of free videos that you can watch and getting started riding with positive reinforcement problem solving, teaching fetch, teaching fun games, all those sort of things. So there's lots and lots there for you to explore. If you decide that you'd like to join us and we have a ⁓ membership club and connection training club.
But it's just a monthly membership, so you can join for a month, two months, three months and leave. There's no big massive contracts or anything like that. And it's a very, very friendly club. I just love our students. They just care so much for their horses. And many of them have been on a long journey as well, have come to this because they're stuck by a horse that's given them a lot of problems, or shall we say given them lot of learning opportunities?
Yeah. And we also have, we have about a dozen trained instructors who are in various places all over the world, so they can help you as well. Some teach live, all teach online. So Connection Training is an online club. We have tons and tons and tons and tons of training videos and training programs that take you through right from the start, right through to counter on the saddle and so on. We're very into groundwork.
based quite a lot on classical groundwork, which of course is just groundwork. So we have lots of of work where you can do on training shoulder in and leg yielding and all sorts of lovely things on the ground, and then transferring that into the saddle. So connection training.com. Cool. And that's it's neat. It's neat that you've got, you know, some instructors in other places. So if people need help, they can go find somebody that's nearby and
learn a bit more and that sort of thing. yeah yeah yeah yes and and you know as as you said at the beginning positive reinforcement is growing people are more interested in it and and so you know there are more and more there are going to be more and more instructors and and hopefully more and more incorporation of it you know we don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water.
You don't have to start from scratch and stop doing everything you're doing. You can start by adding something different in that just gives your horse a little bit of extra fun with you. Build that bond. Still go out on your trail riding with your friends. Still do your dressage. Still work with your instructors that you're working with. You we are not, we don't think that, you know, it's us and only us. We think that this is just a and other great tool to add to your toolbox.
And to give horses a better life and to give you more fun with your horse, which is why we've got them, isn't it? Yes, yes. Yeah, I think that's fantastic because there's so much you can pull from so many different kinds of training, different disciplines. And you just you pick those pieces that work best for you and your horse. And like you talked about earlier, read your horse, what's your horse telling you? And that will help you guide your training program and training process.
Yeah, I love what you're doing because you've absolutely brought everybody together and every, you know, it's such a fantastic resource that you've created. That's why I love what you're doing because God, I wish this had existed 20 years ago. We've had to run all those clinics. I know. People really, it's a fabulous opportunity to explore different people who are coming from different places and doing different things.
such a great place to explore and to say, okay, then I like what that person is doing. I'm going to go and go into their work a little bit deeper and see where that takes me. And then, you go and go to somebody else and somebody else, you know, and find you've got to find your your own joy. That that is to me is the thing, because that's what we're doing. We're all doing this for fun. None of us have to have horses and.
We want to have joy and we want to have fun and we want our horses to be joyful and have fun. So I love what you're doing because it's an incredible resource that you've created. It's really super. Yeah. And it's helping facilitate, you know, for people that journey because it is a journey and there's different destinations, you know, there's different influencers that help guide you and teach you what to look for. then, you know, you'll carry that with you, but then you might be onto the next step and the next person. I like how you said, you know,
Because some people, go, it's just positive reinforcement when they think about it. You have to do just positive reinforcement. You can't use the other stuff when you do positive reinforcement. No, it's all part of this big whole, this whole entire piece ⁓ of our horsemanship. And there's the Tai Chi in there, right? And there's somatics and horsemanship.
Yeah, it's going to keep you keeps you going for life. mean, I, you know, don't see you stopping learning very, very soon. But that's the passion, isn't it? That is the passion and and it's wonderful. And you just meet wonderful people. mean, you make your best friends and just I love it. So it's great.
we so appreciate you coming on. And being a part of the fair in Hannett too. I'm very, very grateful to be asked. I'm so thrilled that you're doing it.