Paula Curtis (00:42)
They were here with Sarah Schloty. She specializes in trauma-informed horsemanship, and it's changing the way in which we interact with horses. Sarah's on the leading edge. She's leading the charge, let's say. Through her Equisoma program, she bridges the gap between human and equine nervous systems, helping both horses and people heal. Her work is eye-opening, and we are really looking forward to this interview, Sarah. I love- for having me. Yeah, thanks for having me. it's great to have you here.
I'd love to hear what sparked your interest and your passion for horses and caused you to pursue this unique path that you're on. So it's so interesting. I've always been an animal person my whole life. And I think like a lot of people, you know, I grew up in a home and relationships were sometimes safe and sometimes not safe. And emotionally speaking, that kind of idea.
I think a lot of people turn to animals for connection, for a sense of relationship, a sense of feeling safe. ⁓ and so like a lot of people, I mean, we had dogs and cats growing up, didn't have horses, but became a little bit horse crazy as a teenager. and had a friend, the best friend of the time who was really into horses. So I had this horsey phase as a teen.
never really gotten to writing, but there was always just this real interest in it. And when I went off to my undergraduate degree in university, somewhere along the way, I learned a little bit about the field of animal assisted interventions or therapies and so on as this sort of sidebar. And I started off, because I still didn't have horses at that time. And I started off with my dog and I brought my dog to a nursing home and we did like a therapy dog visitation type program. And it was in that program that I both
learned a little bit about, well, a little bit more about relationships that humans have with animals, but also started to recognize that the animals don't always have the same experiences of us that we might have with them. And it became very clear to me over the course of my time bringing my dog to this nursing home that she really didn't want to be there. You know, I was overriding her signs of stress and her signs of, you know, feeling unsafe or her signs of anxiety because I felt like I was doing something good for other people.
And animals were always so important to me. And there's this interesting discrepancy that started to creep in over time between her experience of the experience and the humans experiences of the experience. And it got to a point where I was like, I really can't do this anymore. Like I can't justify this. So somewhere in there, I started to move in the direction of doing a master's degree in counseling psychology. And during that time, I got more involved in horses.
and was drawn to learning more about them, I got involved in an equine-facilitated learning program and started to do training in that area. And the focus was still primarily on the human client attending these sorts of interventions. But I was really grateful also to be exposed to trainings that were at least considering the experience of the equine in the equation. It wasn't just equines to
suit the needs of humans in some way, they were also there and had their own needs and their own histories and so on. And so I was introduced to that sort of idea pretty young. And around the same time as that, I was learning about a method of trauma resolution for humans called somatic experiencing, which was created by Dr. Peter Levine. He's written a number of books and has become quite famous around the world. And his work was borrowing off of a number of areas of research, but animal ethology.
looking at how animals in the wild go through various stressors and threats, but come out the other side and don't walk around with PTSD and, you know, hosts of health issues and so on. And why is it that humans do? And by extension, why do animals in domestication also have difficulties? And so it was fascinating to me that in all of this, there was these interesting little threads that were pointing at the direction of something that seemed missing, which was, well, we've got these lovely trauma therapies for humans.
that are based in animal models, but we're not taking that same knowledge and bringing it back around to the animals. Like usually when we think of horse training or dog training or you know any kind of behavior shaping with animals, we're thinking from an operant conditioning standpoint. Are we using sort of you know pressure release negative reinforcement? Are we using clicker training? Like what are we doing? And so we're using these principles of reinforcement to train a behavior or to solve a behavior problem, but we're not looking at
the history, the trauma patterning, the nervous system patterning, safety and relationships, we're not looking at like that bigger picture. And it became evident that there was a gap in the knowledge. And it reminded me a little bit of what I was learning in sort of psychotherapy school around how often kids are hauled off to therapy by their parents to fix the kiddo. Kind of like when we think of bringing a horse to a horse trainer, it's like, well, fix my horse, but don't look at me. Or the parents are like, don't look at me, just...
fix my kid. And I was like, gosh, this is really interesting. But when you look at like best practices around human therapies for say family therapy, for instance, usually the best practices around child therapy are we want to work with the family system because usually the kiddo is symptomatic of what's going on in the family system. This isn't a blame the parents thing. This is more of a parents are deserving of support to parents also have their own histories and traumas and hardships. And so it's not a
pointing the finger thing, it's a, like the parents or the caregivers are also deserving of support because they too may have gone through hard stuff that has yet to be resolved. That is now causing challenges for the next generation. And the next generation is who gets hauled off to therapy, but the parents don't get the support sometimes because of shame or self judgment or what have you. Same stuff happens with horse owners and their horses. And this, parallel started to become really obvious to me as a psychotherapist watching
what was happening in these other realms. And so ever since then, I was like, gosh, how do we start to then open up the conversation around there's more to the picture than just let's shape this behavior or let's train this animal to do this, especially if the human also has similar themes, similar challenges, you know, and or the human's nervous system patterning is influencing what we're seeing happening.
for the animal and also the environmental conditions are influencing something of what's happening. And adding to this picture is also the fact that in the horse world at the very minimum, because I was interested also in donkeys. did a lot of volunteering at a donkey sanctuary for many years. So I'm sort of interested in equines across the board. But horses specifically were interesting because embedded in all of this sort of adversity, trauma, chronic stress, what's going on for the human and how is that, you know,
contributing to maybe what we're seeing in the horses. There's also the fact that there's brain injuries, falls, know, lots goes on for equestrians and also feeds into what we might be seeing. And then there's of course all of the human captivity conditions we create for horses and early weaning and imprint training and all these like sort of harsh methods that are not part of what equines evolved to experience in the wild, which brings me back around to Peter Levine's stuff around
Well, what's different about the wild and wild equids versus their counterparts in captivity, which have far more behavioral and health problems than you ever see in the wild. Why is that? And so all of that sort of brought me back around to, huh, if we were to do psychotherapy for the human equine pairing, what would that look like? But I can't really call it that because of licensure requirements and limitations, but metaphor is apt, I think. And so that's sort of what
brings me here is how do we start to have these conversations and support healing for both as like a precursor to any kind of behavior shaping or operant conditioning? Like how are we addressing all this other stuff that might influence how this stuff unfolds? yeah. And I like how you bring together.
the concept of it's the whole horse, it's past experiences, current experiences, environment. then thinking about like wild horses and thinking about like movement and how much they eat and move their mouth and move their legs. And, you know, looking at educating the person, the horse owner to really the whole horse, mind, body, spirit, what it needs. So I really appreciate you kind of putting that into words for people. Yeah. Yeah.
When you come into a situation that you're helping a human with their horse, what are some of the first things you start to really like look at and then suggest changes to be made? So this reminds me a little bit of when I teach my students, maybe I'll back up, pause your question here because I'm going to circle around and then come into your question with an answer. So when we created Aquasoma, it was to look at how do we address
trauma in the humans, call it whatever you like, adversity, trauma, developmental stuff, like people have different words. We use the word trauma because we've defined it rather broadly and include stuff that some people wouldn't call trauma because that's not their framework. So pick a word, but whatever that is, how do we support the resolution of that in the human and the resolution of that in the equine and how it shows up in their intersections in a lot of different scopes of practice?
In equine assisted psychotherapy and learning, in horse training, in equine behavior consultation, in equine bodywork, in equine veterinary science, there's all these writing instruct, like writing coaching, that kind of thing. There's all these places where humans and equines intersect. And so when we teach the program, we're coming at it broadly speaking, and then we look very specifically, okay, so in this scope of practice, what are places we can intervene? In this scope of practice, what are places we can intervene?
because the scope of the professional will change depending on what they do. But trauma will show up in any room and round pan, as I always say. So it's kind of like, OK, so if it's showing up here, then how can this person, this professional who's working in their scope, work at both sides of it? And then there's going to be stuff they can do and stuff they can't. They'll have to refer on. So that comes to your question, then, Paula, around what are some of the things I watch for? So first off, it's going to depend on the scope.
Because I also can't, depending on my licensure, I might not be able to provide, say, psychotherapy in certain places outside of Canada because I'm not licensed there. So I have to watch my scope. So usually when I come in, I'm usually coming in more as a consultant for anyone that's not within the places where I'm licensed to provide service. So that's the first piece. But when I offer consultation, I'm looking at like the bigger picture. So I'll take a look a little bit at.
you know, what do I know about the history of the human? What's going on in their background, their patterning? What has shaped them to be who they are and how they are? Not again from a defectiveness, blame, shaming kind of place, but like what's happened that's resulted in this being the way things are. Because to a large degree, when we're little infants and fetuses and babies and know, kids, we don't control our environments, right? So we have a number of things that are not in our control. So I look at sort of what is
What is part of that history, that mapping? And I look at what do we know about the equine or the equines and based on that, where are the parallel processes? What are the things that we're seeing that are showing up? What's going on in the nervous system? What kind of nervous system states tend to predominate both human and equine? What is unfinished that still carries charge for both human and equine? You know, what are the environmental conditions? What supports them to feel safe? What supports them to have?
like more sustainable physiology where they're not in fight, flight, freeze and appease kind of behavior and states, you know, and then gathering all that sort of history, form a bit of a conceptualization, like, okay, so knowing, because I am coming in as a psychotherapist with this broader spectrum, I can go, okay, cool. Here's what we might want to work on here to support for the human. Here's what's missing for the equine in terms of external needs, but also internal patterning. And then how do we start to work towards supporting
environmental conditions that work better, that support them to both thrive, where they both feel a sense of safety, and then how do we start to help them repair their own relationships with each other? And then there can be individual bits as well. So it's like an inside and an outside job. It's never just like, well, let's fix the human or fix the horse. It's also, what are the conditions, you know, that are resulting in some of this in the first place? And when you work on those things,
Anything else that comes next, like, you know, well, I need to get ready for riding or I've got a clinic I need to get to, or I need to get this horse on a trailer or what have you. Those things unfold so much more differently if you're using some form of operant conditioning, because you've created a different platform in the nervous system. And so some of the things that are considered like behavioral problems cease to be.
problems when you address these other things, and in which case, cool, then you might not need to actually train something. You know what I mean? Because it ceases to be a problem because we addressed the things that were leading to said problem. Right? That makes sense? Yeah. It's like, you know, we talked about setting it up for success, but I mean, that's really oversimplifying what you just said. But if we, it is our job to set up the conditions and to get the horse to understand.
our intention, what we're asking, what we need them to do. And we're forever like with ourselves, we're always mindful of ourselves when working on this. And really you can set things up to where it's just life is like with the horse as an accumulation of like positive experiences. And when we stopped thinking about training, at least for me, when I stopped thinking about training and started thinking about great experiences, I thought, man, this is exactly like people.
This is like what we do with people. This is like a good friend. You don't get in trouble. You don't, you know, come at your friend with, with bad energy or, or do something where they feel awkward or get in trouble. Cause it wouldn't be a good relationship. I really like how you're sort of bringing the psychology and sort of the science behind, behind this. It's great. I like that you said that too, Jack, cause it's like, there's,
There's also the fact that, you know, we can't always ensure that everything is always going to be hunky dory because life is also going to happen. And what I like about the, if you look at the research on attachment theory, which is getting a bit more of a footing in the animal world now, I think because of initiatives like ours, and there's others as well who've been sort of promoting this in the research world and so on, is we're not always going to get it right. We're going to miss a tune. We're going to get it wrong sometimes. You know, we're going to miss stuff because we're having an off day and maybe we're a bit more charged and stacked than we normally would be.
bit harsher than we normally would be because we're a bit dysregulated. Like it's going to happen. And so while we aim for that to be less of a thing, because this is also just really realistic and human work, like, mean, we're very much like not going to be perfect. So then how do we repair afterwards? Like how do we avoid problems? But then when problems do arise, how do we mitigate them as best as possible? How do we get through them in as ethically
and as humanely away as possible, how do I support repair following a rupture with another human, but also another acwine, right? So that, yeah, it's like, whoops, that was a bit of an oopsie. Okay, I went a little bit over threshold here or wow, wow, I was a little bit, you know, activated by my own stuff because I was, you know, caught up in some other thing or I was a bit disconnected and I was in my head and I wasn't noticing little cues that my horse was giving me and I've been, you know, disconnected from those.
Like those are all really rich opportunities for something different to emerge. So it's not always that like, it's going to be, yes, we want those, those memory bank of experiences that inform the nervous system that maybe things are safer now. And that feels different. And then when things do get a little bit funny, how are we working through those differently? You know, so like the two are part of it. I love how you're recognizing that. Because I think people.
Even more so than in human relationships with their horse relationships, when something goes wrong, they can start to feel very heavy inside and very much blaming themselves and then affects their own nervous system drastically. now next time they are coming to the horse, they're coming with this baggage. And what you're alluding to is, yes, we have to reflect, right? There has to be a self-reflection where we say, ⁓ that did not maybe
go how I would like it to go. But, we need to be able to make observations about the situation and say, this is what happened. But now, now through my reflection, I need to regroup, re-center, you know, or I'm sure you've got some tools that you give people where they can, they can help regulate their nervous system, regulate their emotions. And now when they're coming to the horse, they're coming to it in a way where they're okay. So now.
that energy that their brain, his horses are so aware, as I'm sure you talk to your aunts about, can pick up on your energy from a mile away. Now we've got that platform, like you were speaking to, to build off of again. And there's pieces in that that I want to specify a bit more. So one of them is going to be the owner, animal owner guilt and shame.
That reminds me a little bit of the guilt and shame I sometimes see in parents, where parents anticipate that they're going to be judged or they're going to be criticized that what they do is never enough. And I see this with parents, but I also see this in couples and I see it with animal owners a lot as well. And the pattern is similar. like, look, what you're saying, Paula is like coming at this, something happens where we make a mistake or maybe I'm not at my best and or something happens. And then the next time I approach my animal.
I've got all this self pressure on myself or this fear of being judged or this shame that kicks in around, I messed up and I can never do this right. And if I've got a childhood of patterning of experiences that taught me that I'm never good enough or that I'm bad or what have you, then that can be right there in the queue, making it difficult to be able to have that self reflection because I'm now in a nervous system state that's a bit more jacked up.
because now I'm in all the triggers, right, related to these past things. And if this recent experience is sitting on a whole history of other experiences, yeah, self-regulation is in part, maybe I'll back up. There's a difference for me when I talk about self-regulation from down-regulation. So sometimes it's about teaching down-regulation skills. And there's a lot of people who are doing that. They're, you know, teaching breathing strategies, all that kind of stuff. There's a place for that. That's a little different.
than self-regulation, which is sort of this idea that the nervous system will know that what goes up can come back down. And for so many people and so many equines, what went up did not get to come back down. In captivity, we see this a lot. In the wild, what goes up comes back down. There's safe connection. You're with your mare, you're with your herd. There's no people to come in and interfere. We see this with the roundups now. That's a whole other conversation. But in the wild, when left to your own devices, now there's this continuity.
So that what goes up comes back down in relationship and I feel safe then. I feel that what charges discharges and then I'm back to peaceful existence. So many humans and equines in captivity don't have that. So what went up did not come back down. It went up and stayed up or it went into freeze and appease and I just don't know that deactivation is even possible. And so I found all these ways to try to manage all that charge.
And we see it through people who are in their heads all the time or who go into performance and overworking or drugs and alcohol and addictions. you know, there's all these ways that we manage charge and some are more societally acceptable than others. And I don't think we do a really good job of understanding that. We seem to limit and separate off and call it the war on drugs. And it's like, well, actually, if we look at what...
For this person, it was drugs. For this person, it was sex. For this person, it was alcohol. For that person, it was humor and intellectualizing. For this person, it was going into freeze and being a workaholic. Some of those are more societally prized than others. Some are more villainized, but really it's the same darn thing. That behavior is serving the same function. It's just, we don't do a good job of recognizing that. And some people get more shame than others as a result. And then we have all this moral stuff around addiction that adds complication. But if you take all that out of the equation and just look at the function,
It's like, right, what went up didn't come back down and I use this thing to manage. Well, horses do that in captivity too. I start to feel something, I'm uncomfortable. And then I stall weave because I can't follow my impulse to do what I need to do. I can't go out and find my friends. I'll nip when someone comes close, there's something that happens. And it's like, we support the coming down. So it's different from teaching a grounding strategy, although that can be really helpful. But if there's a lot of unresolved charge.
in the system like incomplete fight, incomplete flight, incomplete relational safety responses, incomplete responses towards forage and friends and freedom and all sorts of stuff and all of that is built up in the queue. There's no amount of down regulating I can get a nervous system to do to just, well, keep managing that, keep blocking that stuff. I want the nervous system to learn that what goes up will come back down without them having to work hard at trying to keep it at bay. Peter Levine talks about
Using your energy to hold your energy back is really exhausting. And that's what we do sometimes with strategies like breathing and what have you. It's like, it's a partial solution, but really it's keeping something down. It's not necessarily supporting the nervous system to repattern. It's just another tool I can use. Not a bad thing. There's a place for that. It's good to learn tools. But what we're doing is, is how do we support the nervous system to work through that cycle and learn that what goes up comes back down?
And for that to clear the system. So it's not something that I have to manage all the time. So whenever I see my horse, shoot, there's that anxiety from that fall. I've got to take my breaths. Well, no, let's actually resolve the fall. Let's resolve what's left over from the fall. So you're not having to do your breaths whenever you see your horse, because you're perpetually anxious because you still have the fall in the queue. Makes sense? Different, different intent. Yeah. does make sense. it's interesting because all of those behaviors that you're talking about
you know, overworking or over-exercising or they're all addictions. They're working one way or another because you're addicted to the emotions that are covering up and you're constantly trying to get that so that you're satisfying eventually. I mean, it's a chemical in your body that you're producing, right?
Now you've got more receptors for that chemical if we keep producing it over and over and over. So now there's this patterning of addiction for whatever it happens to be. So what are some tools that you might use that would be different than the covering it up that would be a tool, but maybe not a resolution to the actual root cause of the problem?
cool answer to this, and I'm hoping it's not too far beyond the average conversation because I'm going, wow, how I would answer this after, you know, to someone who's in year two in my training program would be different from how I answer that to someone who's on day one of the starting point. I'll see if I can provide a general overview. So because when I work with folks, I'm working phenomenologically. What does that mean? I'm working with the phenomenon of what's showing up. I'm not holding judgment about it.
I'm wanting to support curiosity about it. So I'm removing any in my own perception of things, I'm removing any kind of layers around morality or you're a bad person for doing this or this is sinful. That's not in the equation at all. I'm not coming at it from there because that's adding layers into an already layered set of layers. Right. And that's a bigger debate than what I focus on because I'm looking at how do I get them to a place where they no longer maybe need that as much and to go there as a way to create shame and punishment to use say,
positive punishment as a way to try to, know, shame becomes a positive punishment to further suppress a behavior is not actually resolving said behavior. It's just adding more to the queue. I go, well, that's, I'm going to park that over there. So when someone comes in, say, and they've got, for lack of a better word, I'll use the language management strategy, coping mechanism is a different way of calling it. Whatever that coping mechanism is, it's not as simple also as the addictive quality of it, because there's also
the function of that in terms of what they get, but also what they don't have to feel, what they don't have to experience. So if you think about it, like in terms of expansion and contraction as a pattern. So let's say I start to connect with feelings of abandonment or rejection or feelings of shame about myself, and that's what starts to expand. And that doesn't feel very good. And when I was a kid, I start to feel some of that stuff and there wasn't the deactivation of it back to safety.
there wasn't resolution in the relationship for that to feel okay again and for me to go back to feeling like I'm okay and whatever that was as past. It's like when this opens up, things just get really uncomfortable and horrible and so I find some way to shut it down. I find some way to contract it. So don't have to feel it and we all have different ways that we do that. There's so many. Whatever supports it to do this, if I haven't built
the capacity in that system to tolerate a little bit of this as it expands and contracts without them having to manage it. I can't remove the management pattern. I've got to help build the capacity to be with a tinier amount of the thing so that they feel it move through their system like riding a wave almost like it's like a here's this thing, this yucky thing that I don't have to feel when I'm overworking or I'm drinking alcohol or I'm eating a food or I'm in my head intellectualizing or I'm using humor.
or whatever the thing is, it's, I'm going to yoga, I'm going to meditation, those things can be all lovely. And they can support us to be more present or they can support us to be more disconnected. So it's a bigger conversation. So I can't invite them to stop doing the thing until there is more curiosity on board for the thing that happens just before the thing. And so often for people, there's also, there was a lack of no, there was a lack of support.
There was a lack of something. so if I'm, let's say the human is my client, Aquinas client is a different conversation, but let's say the human is my client in the equation here. And their best way of managing to meet their need was whenever they felt say abandonment, loss, rejection, shame, inadequacy, they went and got food. They went and you know, had a drink. My, usually my initial
place to go is going to sound really counterintuitive for lot of people is going, wow, so that's amazing that you figured out how to look after yourself. How did you know to do that? Because that seems really helpful. I'm going to with the, hey, how did you learn how to listen to yourself and handle that as best as you could? Because that was needed. I'm not staying there. It's not my end game.
I'm going to start with that because I don't want to add further shame and I want them to be curious. I want them to start to be noticing what leads them. How do they know that they need to do this thing, whether it's intellectualizing or what have you. There's a sequence in which the behavior occurs and I want to start to get them curious about what leads up to that behavior and then can eventually in time it's like, yeah, so like notice how you knew how to do that or notice how you knew how to hold your jaw.
and hold back that anger. Whenever you talk about your riding coach, I noticed that you tend to have this hunched jaw, you know, and you tend to block your shoulder, you know, like that's so impressive that you know how to do that. what happens as you notice the jaw? Let's hang out with the tightening of the jaw. Cause that's just like taking a drink. It's just, it's a behavioral behavior as opposed, you know I mean? Like it's a body behavior. So it's something serving a function. And I go, okay, cool. Let's, let's hang out with that. And there's going to be sensations there and emotions and we want to.
go to the smallest amount and titrate and be with a tiny amount of the thing. And like what happens? So as you think about your coach and your jaw comes in, well, let's hang out with the tightness in the jaw. And then it's like starting to painstakingly get curious about the sequence of what happens when they do the behavior that's coping. And then what gets to change as a result? Sure, there's a down regulation. Maybe it goes away. Okay, cool. But we get to notice that.
And then eventually in time, the more they get confidence in learning that they can track and explore and be curious about what they do and why, and recognize that from a more compassionate place and stay curious with what changes, then we can start to back it up and go, so the thing that happens just before the thing that you do to manage the thing, right? Now we're getting pretty meta here, but like there's, it's the sequence of it. The behavior they're doing is servile function. It's usually to block.
prevent something else from overwhelming them. Because there was no safe human to be there with them. And when someone came, it was probably not helpful, or it was cruel, or harsh, or punitive. And so the more I can get them to stay curious, the more it's like they start to develop their confidence that they can notice what's there and not get overwhelmed. And then maybe it's like, if you imagine not doing the thing, do you notice happens? That feels scary. OK, let's track that.
We're not going to not do the thing. You're going to still do it. But right now, we're just imagining the idea that you're not going to do the thing. And slowly and slowly and slowly and slowly, we start to connect with a bit more capacity to be with a little bit more of what's in the queue and a little bit more of what's in the queue. And then suddenly, we start to connect with what's being managed. The shame, the fear, the terror, the learned helplessness.
the incomplete rage that wasn't allowed to be expressed because you were going to get punished if you were to be angry at your caregiver or your lighting coach or what have you. Like the shame of having fallen and having messed up and having had to be taken out of the competition that you were just in. Like there's all these things that are in the queue, the wishing that you could run away and you couldn't. There's all these incomplete responses that underlie the patterning.
when we can start to work through those and that clears the system. And it's like, it's like, then I don't really need to do this other thing. Maybe at times I will, maybe at times now that I've worked through this, I'll pick a different path to manage it. Cause we all manage by the way, like it's super normal. Some of us just have the privilege of having management patterns that are a bit more societally accepted. Honestly, sometimes I look at my life.
And I go, why didn't I wind up an alcoholic? Why didn't I wind up, you know? And I go, man, it's just a tiny little line between me and being someone who might've been on the streets. And that privilege humbles me every day. And I go, any other thing being different, I could have wound up with a very different way of coping that would make it even harder for me in the world. And I'd be up against even more difficulties at moving forward in my life because of how we mistreat people who tend to fall in these other categories of coping. So.
It's kind of like this really painstaking process. We can't remove the mechanism until there is more ability to be present to what the mechanism is managing. And that's like slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. And then it's like, eventually when that starts to shift, it's like, can let go of the need to control what's there and I can move through it. And I can feel the rage and I can connect the...
fear and I can be present to the shame and it'll move through and I can come out the other side and feel triumphant and that feels totally different and feel safe and go wow and it's like it frees something up in the nervous system and there's like less in the queue to have to manage and develop more skills to hold back if that makes sense like I've got to do more managing of my anxiety well what would happen if you actually weren't so anxious like how do we address that and the anxiety is usually some other thing
Like it's, you know, like there's all these incomplete responses. Like the fall might need to be renegotiated. There might be an incomplete fight response that didn't get to happen. It doesn't mean you're going to suddenly become violent or, you know, or aggressive, but like to be able to connect with the rage allows you to be able to, in a safe way, in a healthy, biologically appropriate way, allows you to connect with ⁓ my own agency, my sense of boundaries, my sense of self, my sense of identity and self-expression and
my ability to have a need and voice the need. Like what is the thing that's being held back? It's like, ⁓ needs, identity, anger, sadness, grief, like whatever is there that's being held back by the behavior. How do we start to work through that? Cause nothing that's human is foreign to any of us or should be foreign to any of us. So it's like, how can we work through it? And it's, it's really a beautiful, beautiful process.
But it takes time because if we were to just open it up all at once, that could be really overwhelming. There's a reason why it's being managed, right? Because otherwise it would be too much and it would upset the apple cart. And if the patterning when we were little was what goes up does not come back down, then I have to find some way to keep it down. I don't know that what goes up will deactivate and I can be safe again. And it's okay for me to work through that and someone will be there with me or I can be there. That didn't happen.
The fall didn't get to be renegotiated. Pain didn't get renegotiated. The safety and relationship didn't get renegotiated. And I find so many people have these early experiences and then they turn to horses because there's a passion or I love animals or animals feel safer. And then they get to horses and then they learn a whole bunch of ways of being with horses that are kind of like institutionalized abuse. Like we see the systemicness of this, you know, and it's just like, and then I learned to be abusive.
because like, it's interesting, like what we learn in horsemanship is often like what maybe the, how was the coach parented? What did the coach learn in their own parenting experiences? That gets passed down as like horsemanship lore. And this justifies my boss mentality. like, is that how your parent treated you? Like there's a kid underneath that coach, right? Like there's all these layers and I go, man, like we need to start talking about this folks. Like how do we, how do we start to support a bigger frame?
And so part of it might be, yeah, I need to take some breaths, but it's more than just that. Cause sometimes the breaths just become like another variant of taking it. It's another way to block the enormity of what's in the queue that just needs to be sliced thin so we can help the nervous system release it. that's great. That's really, it's really a beautiful thing to come at something with the idea of curiosity and exploration without having judgment about it.
So that you can fully, fully explore and be curious, because if you're any type of layer of judgment, you're just, like you said, you're just, you're just again, making it worse, not better. And there's so many parallels between that. mean, can you imagine, know, if a horse is nervous and I step in there, I'm now blocking and I'm adding fuel to the fire. It's perceptible. is even more closed up.
But if I acknowledge it as curiosity and I say, well, let's take our time and settle together. Now let's go look over here at this thing and get them curious. Maybe we sublimate that anxiety and that concern and fear into curiosity. And getting that horse aware of it, but then giving them time to then come up with the idea and acknowledging and say, you're nervous. That's going to, that's okay. Let's get curious and go over here. And you think about this, if somebody could master this within themselves first.
Makes working with horses a whole lot easier. And this is why we built the program. So our level one is very much working human to human nervous system first. And people go, I wanted to learn about horse trauma. Like the whole program is horse trauma, but we're working because we're online. We wanted to make the program really accessible. We've got people from all around the world who take it, who can't necessarily travel. And as you both know, horse owners are often strapped for cash. You have a farm, you got animals. Where's the farm sitter? Travel is tough when you have big, big livestock. So.
We were like, how can we give something to people so that they, even if they never make it to our level two in person stuff, they can at least get a chunk of things in level one online. And that is it. It's, we working when we get together human to human, get to work with a primate nervous system, let's start there. Because the principles are the same. And as I tell all my students all the time, what we're here, human to human, what you're ever doing with the animals, it's just.
I can't go to the Horace and say, okay, Horace, let's track that sensation as you hang out with the sensation of fear. What do you notice happens next? You know, like I can't work with them in that same way, but the same principles that we teach them will apply. And it changes how Horacemanship unfolds. It changes how behaviorism unfolds. Like it completely shifts it because if you are coming in and you've got some patterning and the Horace is used to you being in that patterning,
Now you've got these sequences that the horse is expecting and now we've got these anticipatory responses. And if the horse has, and this is always so mind blowing to me, it never fails to amaze me how an owner and an equine have some shared parallel themes in their history. And it's so wild to me. And sometimes that's like self-fulfilling prophecy, like the human owner.
inadvertently sets up scenarios where that ends up happening for the animal. And so it was sort of like a setup, but like unconsciously. But other times it's like, you end up feeling attracted and by a particular horse and you don't know why. And it turns out there's like this similar patterning in history and all Jack comes in the queue, like that's all there. And so it's like, if that horse is fearful, is there also something happening for that human around?
similar themes, right? Like, and now we're pinging off of each other, you know, and it's just so rich. It's so interesting when you start to deep dive into this stuff. And, know, the idea of what happens before what happened happened. We talk about that with students all the time with their horses. If you are waiting for the actual behavior, you are really late. Yes.
bunch of things that took place before that behavior was exhibited. And if you can recognize it beforehand, there's really no pressure involved in the equation because you're correcting it in the nuances and the small things and the thought and the, you know, just the slightest thing. so then it makes the whole process so much easier for both of you. And then you're something worth
going with, you're something that the horse now wants to be with because you are, no, that's an asset and that's a relationship. So. Yeah. Like how can we, not that we're going to be perfect at it because we're going to have our own traumas and times where our stuff comes up and then that might trigger the animal stuff and vice versa, but like, how can we as best as possible be a resource in the midst of the animal's life? What other resources are there that are species appropriate to them?
so that when they experience us, they experience us in a perception of safety, so to speak, or a neuroception of safety. how, and it's not that we're going to not mess up, but again, that they come to trust that, this human course corrects. this human can attune. this human can notice. this human, I can trust them to have a certain predictable way. And can that predictability, even when there's
a misattunement or an over threshold moment or a moment where the human is a little bit, you know, maybe frustrated that that human will course correct it. And in ergo, what goes up comes back down and ergo that horse starts to learn to experience what goes up comes back down with that individual human. And that sets a whole different tone and, it's like, ⁓ okay, cool. Then what gets to happen? So it's, releases the pressure on us to be these perfect humans, which is so not.
possible, and that might reaffirm earlier beliefs around, I'm not good enough. We're not going to be perfect at this. Let's just take that off the table. But like, how can I support my nervous system so that the animal experiences me differently and the world differently, and it can start to experience what goes up, comes back down also. Right? And then, then like, if you've got a horse that's in freeze and it pees, because so many horses go into their own trauma and their shutdown responses.
And we've all known stories of these horses that go through experiences and then they come into a place where they're feeling safer. And then suddenly they start to get more opinionated and they start to get a little bit more fighty and a little bit more, you know, pushy and aggressive and opinion. like, suddenly they're no longer this like push button horse and the human gets scared. It's like, ⁓ and the horse starts to exhibit stuff that the human hasn't yet processed or allowed out. Like the horse starts to expand.
into safety and in doing so, all the stuff that's in the queue starts to show up. And if the human hasn't processed their own thwarted fight and flight and whatever, or hasn't allowed themselves to experience whatever suppressed needs are there, the human might inadvertently send the horse back into freeze and appease because they themselves have not gone into whatever this is. So it's like, it's so parallel. like, how do we, how do we solve all of that? And it starts with the curiosity. It really does. Yeah.
Would you like to talk about your presentations that you're doing in the horse fair? So your first presentation would be your horse's nervous system. Would you like to speak to that a little bit? Sure. So I wanted to give a couple of bits and pieces for people to take away. And one of them is having languaging and a map for which to watch for your own nervous system patterning and that of the animal that you're with, regardless of what species. And so I walk through,
what we're going to call the activation cycle. It comes by a lot of different names and there's a lot of different models that use a similar model like the one that I have that I talk about in the presentation. And what I've tried to do without making it any single version, I've tried to batch a bunch of versions together to try to draw from the best of various models to create like a singular one. ⁓ People, if they're interested in it, they can actually order a copy of a poster version of that for their own barn or for their own office.
And I walk through this activation cycle, this idea that what goes up can come back down and watching for the different nervous system state shifts for yourself and for the equine as a bit of an intro tool for curiosity. So how can we start to gauge where a human or an equine is on that graph? And it starts to become, there's like a bot, a top down version of this and a bottom up version of this. So I wanted to give at least a top down version, like an understanding or a framework.
And then from there would come bottom up exploration, like, okay, well, there's, there's the knowing where you are on the map and then there's knowing how you know where you are on the map, which is going to be more about noticing sensations and body posture and physical expression and all the things that come along with those states. And then there's more to it than that, but I wanted to start with at least a map.
for folks. And the second presentation was offering people some languaging from the standpoint of the polyvagal theory, which is Stephen Porges's work, which has gotten a bit more well known in recent years. And a number of different horse people are talking about it more now. It seems to have made its way across a bit more publicly. Challenges with the polyvagal theory aside, which I sort of name and is beyond the scope of what I recorded, because that's a bigger conversation.
There are aspects of the theory that are really helpful for horse owners to understand or horse professionals to understand. And so I walk through some of the helpful bits that are maybe more accessible and that don't get too much into the complications associated with the polyvagal theory or what I'm calling pony vagal therapy for to be affectionately referring to it. But when we, when we go to pony vagal theory, like what are the bits and pieces that might be easier to access or comprehend? Cause it's quite a complex theory.
And a lot of it goes whoosh over the average person and some of it goes whoosh even for me. And I just leave that to the scientists. But I wanted to at least give some entry point because a lot of people keep hearing about it now. And I wanted to give a little bit of an overview of what that was and as a perspective. We're looking forward seeing the presentations. Lovely.
I think people are going to come away with some really useful tools that they can apply for themselves and their horses. So both parts of the equation, which is fantastic, and we sure appreciate having you as a part of the fair. think this is going to be so helpful for people.
Thanks both of you for having me again. And I will say this too, one thing we're going to open up for 2026. So for those of you who are watching these videos this year, Equisoma up until now has been predominantly a professional training program. So regardless of what your scope of practice is, if you're working with humans and equines in some capacity, come on over, right? We've had a lot of people over the years reach out to us and say, Hey, I'm not in a professional scope of practice working with equines and humans.
I really would love to take this program because I'm the average horse owner and I have got my own trauma and I don't intend to hang out a shingle and use this professionally. I would love to do this for me as my own journey for me and my animal or animals. And so as of January, 2026 in one year's time, registration will be including average horse people who are not going to be doing this as a profession. ⁓
That has been on your mind. You've been interested and you've been curious about this. We're opening up a pathway for them as well. So that is also another wonderful thing too. So for those folks, there's going to be a method forward as well, building on the two videos I've released for the FAIR this year. So that's another piece of good news as well. where can people find you online?
Equusoma.com. So E-Q-U-U-S-O-M-A.com. And then there's my regular website, acerashlota.com as well. And those links are going to probably be available through the. They are. They are at the bottom of your bio page. So every video page. people will be able to check that out.
Thank you so much for everything that you do and you're helping out so many people and so many horses, but we really appreciate you being in the fair and everything that you're doing. And thank you so much for joining us today and spending so much time with us. Yeah, thanks so much for creating this platform and a place for people to have these wonderful conversations that are helping shift things in a really great and exciting new direction. So thank you both for spearheading this and making this available to the world.
