Paula And Jack Curtis (00:42)
Today we're joined by Darcy Epops. She's an accomplished equestrian coach, international competitor, and trailblazer in the mental performance for riders. With over 30 years in the saddle and a background in science and education and counseling, Darcy brings a unique blend of practical
and mindset mastery. After facing her own struggles with fear and self-doubt, she discovered the power of mental performance coaching and now dedicates her work to helping riders break through limiting beliefs,
build unshakable confidence, and create deeper partnerships with their horses. So welcome, Darcy. It's great to have you.
Darci (01:16)
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to share some information with your audience.
Paula And Jack Curtis (01:21)
it's so wonderful to have you as a part of the fair as well. it's definitely the topic that is very speaks to the hearts of most of us, right, as you're just talking about. What's one of your favorite success stories with, let me be with you or yourself or a client or a horse? Is there something that would come to mind to sort of exemplify like the type of work that you do?
Darci (01:31)
Yeah, 100%. 100%.
so many. think the kind of the most poignant one was I was working with a rider probably about three years ago and she'd been an upper level rider.
had a fairly substantial fall, really shook her confidence and couldn't ride for probably about eight months. And when she came back, she found that not only was she struggling with her own self-chattering, negative thoughts, nervous system dysregulation, and she found like, like literally her body was shaking and trembling. And even when that got under control, it was that really deep trembling. And I think the most heartbreaking part for her was just this huge disconnect between her and the horse.
She
said, even just working on the ground, not even being in the saddle, she said, we just, we don't click, we don't mash. And she came to me sort of as a last ditch result. was considering either stopping riding or absolutely selling her horse. And she said, you know, this has been my hard horse. Many of us have stories of our hard horse, like that one that we just, we carry with us everywhere. And she said, I feel like I need to let him go and move on to somebody else.
not who he needs anymore. And so she came to me last ditch efforts to kind of get things back on track. So we did some somatic work, we did some mental performance work. It was kind of a slow grind in the beginning until she started to get it getting a bit of buy in. She started learning a little bit more about how her brain works, how her nervous system works. And with that understanding, those tools just became so much more powerful for her. And then so we worked together fairly intensely,
a while and then we started kind of weaning off and I think the most spectacular thing is even now three years later I get these you know these these conversations these little pieces from her she said my riding is not to the level it used to be she said physically I don't know if I can do that but she said I am finding joy and connection and he is my hard horse again and I don't feel like I'm less than that I'm not able to meet him at his ability because she said I recognize that he doesn't have a goal he doesn't
He doesn't care whether we're jumping, you know, this big or this big. He just cares that I'm the leader. He needs him, you know, and that I allow him to be a horse when he needs to be a horse. yeah, she'll call sometimes just crying because she's reconnected with that really deep-seated joy of what she's doing and she's really enjoying her sport and the riding time again. And just it's...
She's feeling empowered with what she's doing. just think there's so many of us have similar stories and I think that's probably one of the most heartwarming ones because literally I get teary-eyed when I talk about her.
Paula And Jack Curtis (04:18)
that's beautiful and it's neat because she went from competing at high levels and you're very goal oriented. But when it comes down to it, our horses really don't care. They just want, like you were saying, a good leader, a friend, somebody that they can count on that shows up and makes them feel the same joy that we look to have with our horses.
And when we can provide that to our horse, that's all they need.
Darci (04:45)
Yeah, I think, you so often we hear people say, my horse is my mental health. And while I think that is fabulous, I do think we have a responsibility to make sure that we are safe within our own nervous system, that we understand how our brain and body works together so that we can show up for our horses as well. I mean, we've taken them out of their pasture, out of their stable, out of their home. We've gone off to do...
something else, it's out of their environment and we have this expectation that it's going to be the same as it is at home or that you know maybe they'll maybe they'll show up for me maybe it'll be the same as it is at home and it's so important that we we acknowledge that we have a role it is our responsibility to show up as that leader to know how to regulate our nervous system and to recognize that some days it ain't the day right the most important thing is that relationship that building that trust
and that dependability and not exclusively put our mental wellness on our horses because then when we have these unrealistic expectations of what's going to happen when the pressure is on. And it doesn't matter if it's a trail ride on a windy day or if it's at some big venue. So I think it's one of those things where it just becomes, it is so important we understand how our brain and body work. We know a little bit of the science. We have some of those tools so that even on the really hard days, we're not dysregulated.
how to show up and help our horses so that we salvage something that's relationship building rather than relationship diminishing. And I also want to feel like satisfied with how I showed up for the day. Like it might not have been my best ride, my best performance, but I'm satisfied with the gains I made and I know I can build on this and move forward. And that's where that satisfaction and that joy returns, right? Because we get past, we lead the judgment and the I'm less than stories and the I'm not good enough for my horse or the frustration
with the horse because man do we see a lot of that in the horse world too, right? We watch people so dysregulated doing things to horses and then all the comments around us are about what a jerk, what a, insert bad word here, the equestrian but it's just because they don't have the tools and the resources and the knowledge to recognize that they actually do have more power and control than they think of that situation and they can show up as a better...
equestrian for themselves, for their horses, and for our community, right? It's like we watch people perpetuate these behaviors because it's what's modeled. Well, can we change what we model?
Paula And Jack Curtis (07:06)
and what's interesting about the nervous system piece is sometimes one isn't even aware. So like I had a situation where I grew up with arthritis since I was two, three years old, know, early onset juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. And I had it my whole entire life. And I, in my mind, thought I was a fairly relaxed, know, mellow, not fearful type of person.
And we recently moved and the home had mold in it, which really brought a bunch of symptoms to head and I ended up with psoriasis going on all over my body and that sort of thing. And so I had to really dial in my diet and I was down to like four or five foods that I was eating. And, but it brought the inflammation in my body way down. And the strangest thing would happen to me, I would be grabbing for a door knob.
or going to like open a jar and I would have fear come up and I was like huh that's really odd I wouldn't have expected to have like I don't feel like I didn't I was not conscious of the fact
that my nervous system had this going on in the background with all these little activities. once the inflammation, now this is a slightly different scenario, right? But then what you're talking about, but it still is very similar. It's this nervous system component. And I went holy moly, I better start, you know, I'm super sympathetic in my nervous system. I'm in this fight or flight, which I was not aware of. And I have got to do
some, like you were talking earlier, the somatic work and the mental work and mindfulness and all of these things I had to bring in because there was this underlying thing that was, I'm sure my horses felt it, you know?
Darci (08:51)
Yeah, you bet. did. Yeah,
you bet. Yeah. And sometimes they're awesome despite us. they're, they're, I mean, unless they themselves are super dysregulated, man, do they take a lot of our stuff. Right. And it's true. think, I think one of the things people sometimes struggle with is the fact that there was communication, there's one gigantic nerve that's called your vagus nerve, and it communicates from brain to body. And that, that nerve innervates, like literally chest.
Paula And Jack Curtis (09:01)
Yeah.
Darci (09:17)
diaphragm, abdominal cavity. So we have some messaging that's going from my brain through that communication line. And I also have even more information going from my body, from my nervous system backup to my brain. And it's a constant two way. So if there's a problem on one or the other.
it's like if there's a problem on one side, it's gonna impact the other and vice versa. So I just think, but like you said, so many of us are completely unaware. We push down and squish down all this stuff. It's like having a great big beach ball, right? And you push it down and you push it down and you push it down and you ignore it.
the worst possible moment, you lose grip and goes flying up in the air and you have this explosion. And the other thing that's really interesting with our nervous system is we have this thing we call window of capacity or window of tolerance. And so this is my window and things aren't going very well and I'm stuck here up at the top. I don't have very far to go before I redline. And the other nuts thing is the fact that
our brain having the ability to change so much, this starts to feel normal. Like I start to feel like that's as big as my window is and I'm constantly redlining. And there's just so many ways we can make that window bigger again. So I've got all this room to move when things are challenging without redlining on either side and getting in trouble, but it feels normal.
Right? So it's in people, you'll say, well, stress, inflammation, whatever. No, no, this is normal for me. It's actually not. Right? We should have this ability to have lots of room to move. And yeah, there's going to be things that push us out of that window. But I don't want to be pushed out of that window for something tiny. Right? And I can build that capacity and it's like, can handle more stuff. And it comes from education and knowledge, knowing yourself, building that awareness and
getting the tools to make that window bigger and also to recognize when that window is small and we're popping out that there are things I can do to reset, right? But it's just so interconnected for us and for our horses. And we just, you know, we're passing judgment on others, we're passing judgment on ourselves, we're passing judgment on our horses when it's just a lack of knowledge, education and awareness. So it's like kudos to you to recognize that inflammation
that
seemed to be environmental was impacting everything we were doing. Because it does. are like electricity and chemistry and a great big skin sack. I tell my students all the time, we got to know what triggers us, what impacts us. And if something's triggering you, you know there's ammunition in there that got triggered. So we have to figure out what it is and you know kind of diffuse that before it explodes at the worst moment.
Paula And Jack Curtis (11:50)
you know, I always see people working with horses. That's what I do for a living as well. And it's like, I know how much we can do off of our horse. I know how much we can do to work on ourselves away from the horse and how important that is. But how would you describe or how important is that to other people that they understand?
that a lot of this journey that they're on with their horse, it can really be worked on by themself and maybe the most important lessons that they ever do will be the lessons away from their horse. Could you add anything to that?
Darci (12:25)
If you, we've all had the experience where we walked into a room and we sense, our spidey senses start tingling. We know there's something going on, right? We just walked in and we just feel it.
You you came home from school or from work and you walked in the house and it's silent, but you know instantly there was something going on right before you got there. Because we've got all these amazing ways of reading people's body language we're not even aware of. Your horse is even more sensitive to that than we are. So it becomes this thing where before I even get out of my vehicle when I'm going to catch my horse, literally before I even catch my horse, how do I manage to do that check?
figure out what's going on with me today. What happened? What am I carrying around? Like I do in some of my presentations, I have a great big brick and we write down on the brick all of the stuff that bugs you, that you're carrying around. Your chatter, your previous experiences and I'll say, could you hold this brick? No, yeah.
Could you hold the brick for five minutes? Yeah. Could you hold the brick like out front of you like this all day? Not a whole. Well, that's what you're doing, right? You were carrying this baggage around all day and you can't help. So now you're getting on your horses with a whole lot more baggage, right? That's throwing you out of balance and all the rest of it. So the things we can do before I even get out of my car, before I even catch my horse, before I even get on, before I even do that challenging move or activity that either I wanted to do or my
has asked me to do, there's so many little either big or even just tiny micro resets. It saves my horse from the wear and tear on my horse because I don't need a million repetitions because when I'm in that stress state, we call it your sympathetic nervous system, when you're stressed you get stuck in the low part of your brain and this thinking part of your brain where you can remember your courses and plan what you need to do and reason, that part of your brain goes offline. You can't even, like you
don't you can't access it. So so many people will say I didn't even hear what my coach said. Yeah, because you were already in the wrong part of your nervous system. So how on earth did you think that ride or that exercise was going to go well? Right? You couldn't even hear what your coach was saying. Nevermind thinking, nevermind coordinating, nevermind having relaxation, nevermind being a really good rider, which is being your own best coach. I know I need to support this out of rain here. I know I'm inclined to get crooked through that turn. You can't even access that.
So there's so many things before you ever get on your horse you can do to just ever so slightly give yourself a bigger window so you have more capacity to handle things. And that's not to say it should always be easy because we don't grow and improve if we're not stressed, right? We get that chemical everybody hears about, that dopamine, right? That comes from pushing yourself ever so slightly outside of your comfort zone. But if it's, you're not even getting there with a decent window, you're not getting dopamine. You've got all these other neuromodulators, neurochemicals,
hormones that are impacting your brain again because of that two-way communication. So how on earth do I think, plan, show up, ride well, perform well when I'm already in a tiny window and it takes nothing to bounce me out of it and I start redlining and I can't think and I can't hear and I can't balance and I can't remember all that practice and all that work I've been doing, it's gone. Like it literally is gone because you can't access it. like whoop, it left. So if I can do things to get myself a bigger window,
So this doesn't happen. So I can think and plan and hear the cues and the help my coach is giving me. Right? And still do hard things. Still do hard things. But there's just so many things that by having an awareness of myself, my tendencies, and the things I need to do to reset and build that window a little bit. So win-win for me, my horse, the community. Right? Then they see good rides. We train our eye to see good rides. I think that's one of the things we watch.
You know, we watch people ride and that looks normal. We think, this is how it goes. It's not, it's actually, that's not what it should look like. So it just becomes that thing where it literally, serves our community when we can show up better, when our posture can be right, when our timing can be right, when our ability to be empathetic and sympathetic to my horse and allow them the time they need to figure something else out because I'm patient.
Because I'm okay, I'm not like, eeeh. And so it's, yeah, I think it's just really important that we just have a little bit better understanding of nervous systems. Because a human nervous system and an equine nervous system, nowhere near identical, mammals are mammals, right? So I think it serves us so well to recognize for ourselves, for our community and for our horses that there's things I can do so I can show up as a better version.
Paula And Jack Curtis (17:04)
and just the words and the way that you explain people and the way that we might forget, especially if we're stressed or under pressure, the way that you're explaining it, that's going to help people to understand how their horses think and sort of how that role of emotion and thought and how it all goes together. really, you are helping people to think maybe more like their horse, even though you're making them become more aware of
how they think. So I think that's, I think that's amazing. because when we understand how our own brain works, and when we can't access, you know, the prefrontal cortex and get in there to get to the information that we might really need in that moment, our horses are dealing with the same sorts of scenarios. And the window is very interesting, because we work that window with our horses, right? We're, we're always trying to expand and help our horses be more comfortable with more and more and more. But we can't
Darci (17:30)
Yeah.
Paula And Jack Curtis (17:57)
start with a lot right away and it's the same for people. So what are some of your favorite tools for your writers and those that you're helping and working with to help them go from a window like this to maybe even just a window like this because even if we just open it a little bit it makes such a difference.
Darci (18:15)
Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things I want to build on before I add that is the
Ideally, neuroscience and biology is telling us we need to be taxed about 10 % outside of our comfort zone, right? But me as the equestrian, I have the roadmap, I have the plan. My horse doesn't have that. So then I have these expectations of why didn't you get it? Why didn't you do it? Well, you're the one with the roadmap. You're the one who knows there's a really cool exercise where I tell you draw a house, know, add some windows, add some trees, add a walkway, here's the door. And then afterwards, I give you the criteria. While you need
a door on the right side of the front of the house and you needed three windows and you needed a chimney. Like I'm giving you all the data afterwards and I'm taking things away you might get a couple points but I'm taking a whole bunch away from you. Like that's where our horses are at. So if we can't even plan and think and be very clear and very succinct not too much data at once remember only 10 %
my horse is already in trouble. So if I'm feeling frustrated and angry, I can't even be strategic enough to say, okay, he didn't understand that piece. What do need to do? What do I have to move him off my leg? Get that suppleness, get that softness, get him so he's listening to me. So he's attuned to me again, and then do a couple simple exercises with less pace so he understands and then so now he's got the roadmap to right he has a few directions to so tools to really help.
think one of the things we hear about so often but really and truly it is for some people, not for everybody because we're all so different, one of the most amazing tools is recognizing that, you know, so often we'll hear people yell at us, don't forget to breathe. Well, chest breathing puts you in your stress system. Chest breathing is...
almost as bad as forgetting, right? You really need to recognize that to do breath work that puts you back into your rest and digest or parasympathetic, I tell students, think of it as your pothead side of your nervous system. I'm chill and relaxed. I can go with the flow. It's all good. So if you want to get into that, breathing is both automatic.
and it's something you can use to take control of your nervous system. So, so often I'll tell clients, you know, find that nice, strong, relaxed posture, no tension, but strong, right? You want to be a dancer. You want to be holding your own body weight. Be really balanced. But then, you know, we watch so many people, especially in the English world, we've got our britches on. He's got our guts all sucked in and you can't actually breathe and you can't figure out why you're tense and why you're getting a little amped. It's because you need to let your belly go. You need to let that big plate of muscle in your...
So your lungs can fully inflate so we can get get good gas exchange too much carbon dioxide in my body black and silent cranial bulb my brain is making predictions and my brain says okay lots of tension some stress chemicals and Too much carbon dioxide right? I know what this is like This is just like the time we were being chased by the saber-toothed tiger or whatever the bad scenario was so then your brain makes that same prediction so again, then you
you get what we call soda straw view of the world. I don't notice that I was supposed to turn, that there was another horse coming up on this. I don't even see it. I can't hear instructions. I can't think and ride my horse well. So if I can just allow my brain to get the message, it's safe now. We're not actually under stress. We're not under threat. So just using breath, doing really good breath work. It's a longer exhale. It's letting your belly move.
It's, you know, allowing all the muscles in your chest to relax a little bit so we can, between every one of our ribs, we've got a little rib, a little muscle we call intercostals. We want all of them to be able to move. And then as we're doing that, tension is going down. We're getting increased oxygenation and my brain is saying, well, maybe we're not fighting or running or.
So maybe the danger's passed, right? And that dials us out of our high part of our stress system that's making our way to like this. And we're so slightly rebuilding that window. So I think, you know, we hear breath work, but do you know why breath work?
right? You're sending information from your body, including things like gas exchange. You're sending that information to your brain and the only way your brain is getting information is from your senses and the data incoming from your body. And your brain is making predictions based on, last time it was kind of sort of like this. And our brains are velcro for negative.
And it's tep-lon for the good stuff, right? So my brain says, based on the last crappy thing, because man, do I remember every bad thing I remember so well. So based on the last bad thing, it was like this. And the story gets bad. And the chatter gets bad. And the body's not where you want it to be. But if we can, one simple thing, change your breathing. Just dial down some of the information your brain is getting. It's not quite as bad as
I mean it's simple, but do you understand why you're doing breath work? Do you understand why just breathe doesn't help your clients, right? It's don't forget to belly breathe long exhale just and two or three of those before you go Will allow you that tiny little bit of a reset does it give me a big window now, but I'm not this big now. I'm this big
I'll take it. And then there's things we can do like physiological size and all the rest of it. And there's just lots of things even we can do to expand our breath work practice. Nevermind all of the other tools. But I think the one that so many of us hear about is breath work. Do you know why? Like, do you know why that works? There's a reason for it. And you can practice it and get really good at noticing how relaxing your gut, changing your posture, lengthening your exhale, right, can help. And if you only have time
for one thing in one second, dump. Like it's a like get rid of everything you can. It's dump off some carbon dioxide and then
And I gotta go. I'm at the end gate. They're yelling at me, I gotta go. Right? But it's any tiny little micro shift is awesome. And you can do that in real time on your horse. There's lots of other things we can do before we ever get out of the car or catch the horse. You know, if I've got more time in the inbox or before I have to go do my thing. But if I've only got seconds, right, changing my breathing will buy me a tiny little bit more room in that window.
Paula And Jack Curtis (24:31)
people can work on this. You're talking about doing this on the horse. Absolutely. But they can practice this with their driving to the airport and they're running late. Actually, it's best to maybe learn and practice a lot of these techniques off of the horse because then they don't have that horse and that stress there in front of them. But I think when you do breath work and you realize how much of an impact, how much of a difference it makes, like you can use it in the morning to wake up. You can use it at night to relax. can
Darci (24:43)
100%.
Yeah. Yeah.
Paula And Jack Curtis (24:58)
You can use it for so many different things and it works so well that if I can practice doing it every day, I'm just going to do it naturally when I'm with my horse and around my horses.
Darci (25:08)
And that's
awesome, Jack, because that's exactly right.
I can't do it in the heat of the moment. It's one of those things. It just has to become a habit. It needs to be something I do regularly. So you're right. Do it in the morning. Do it on the drive to the barn. Do it before a hard conversation. Do it after a hard, after an easy conversation. Just get comfortable with doing it repetitively. So bookending your days with it, setting a timer on your phone. So you maybe do it every hour, hour and a half. Just, and start to pay attention to
how if I do it before I go do that hard meeting with that.
person I don't really want to talk to or that horse that's challenging to lead in and outside of, you know, in and out of the stable, it actually gave me a tiny bit more room. Like, pay attention to how it impacts you. And you're right, it is 100%. You cannot do anything new in the moments of challenge because that's gone. That ability to think and reason and plan, you don't have access to it. So we want to make sure we don't get hijacked, right? I don't want to get to that point. I talk about
signal lights so red, yellow and green. You want to know when you're in yellow and have the tools to get back to green because when you're here you're finished. Like it's done for a while. You need to sort of say right and we're going for a hack or I'm gonna go hand graze for today because I'm not gonna be able to bring my best to this and I'm not gonna build our relationship. I'm not gonna strengthen our lives.
So let's salvage what we can and take the pressure off. So you're 100 % right. You cannot do it in heat at the moment. That's why manageable form and systematic work is all pre-horse so I can bring it to my horse. Because it's me, it's who I am, it's what I do, it's my habit. And it is my identity, it is part of who I am. So 100%.
Paula And Jack Curtis (26:50)
So how do you help writers that have these stories that start to play? And what sort of tools do you use for those sorts of things?
Darci (27:00)
Yeah, lots. It kind of depends what the story is and how big it is. Because our brains are so sticky for negative, our tendency is to replay the story over and over and over again. And there's a really cool saying that says neurons, which are brain cells, neurons that fire together, wire together. The more I do something, like any habit, the
Faster it happens. So the problem is if I'm by myself and they were retelling the story I ask a client how did your ride go with your practice session? They're gonna tell me every bad thing every single bad thing because that's what's covered in highlighter in my brain
So we have to get really clear, really good at noticing while we're doing it. When I'm working with clients, we'll do some NLP techniques. So one of the things is, well, I'll get you to visualize your ride and I'll get you to see what's going on. And we'll talk about making the picture or because this is like the best moving making machine. Like, wow, can you create these amazing stories in your head, right? And you think of a conversation you have with somebody and you got stumped.
and the conversation ends and half an hour later you're like and then I could have said that and they would have said this and you get yourself even more out and it didn't even happen. So we use NLP techniques where we'll visualize the story and we'll make the picture smaller and darker and further away and grainy and dial down volume and take away some of the emotional that we carry from it and then we'll do the office and we'll find this awesome memory real or otherwise brain has a hard time understanding what's
real and not real. We wake up from nightmares, absolutely terrified, sweating, shaking. It didn't happen. It's here. So we work on dialing up all the awesomeness of the good rides and dialing down and fading away some of the other ones. So that's good for people that don't have a bunch of traumatic stuff behind. Like I had a fall, I'm a little rattled, I'm a little shaken. I was a little embarrassed on this ride and I'm fearful of being judged. But people that have had bigger things or people who maybe have come from a more challenging
background and they are more hyper vigilant because they have had less than awesome things not only in rotting but in life. So then we do other other work we do somatic work and we go back and we try to find those initial memories and we try to give you the tools to have empathy and compassion to that smaller you to walk that smaller you as the adult towards feeling being and doing differently. So then we start getting
into some somatic work. So it really depends on what's the backstory for the person. How long has it been showing up for them? How deeply ingrained is it into their brain and nervous system? But I think the most important thing is when you're telling the stories of what happened, notice how often you're telling the less than awesome stories. How much are you literally creating this pathway in your brain that becomes a sidewalk, that becomes a paved road, that becomes
a superhighway. The more we repeat those awful stories without somebody to kind of walk that journey with us and help us to change the emotional meaning of that story, you're not serving yourself. So even if you're just by yourself and you're not working with somebody who can help you with that, stop telling the crappy stories. Start telling the good ones or the neutral ones. Neutral is awesome too. We want to go to the bad. We want to go to the dramatic and the awful and we feel worse.
So often people are like, how was it? It was terrible, was awful. Oh, that's terrible. That's awful. It's not serving anybody. yeah, so it it kind of depends on what the back thing is for the person who I'm working with, just how deeply ingrained in it, how far back for them does it go? Often it's a lot more than just the time and the tack. Often there's stuff that's happened well before they had that fall, had that challenging thing happen. And so often, because we are creatures
habit, a lot of our habits of being our sense of our identity comes from things that happen to us and our kids and that as kids it just became part of a nervous system. just it is that's like I became who I am because of how I experienced my life as a kid. So can we understand that and can we figure out ways I can show compassion, empathy and walk that version of myself into more updated pattern.
So that becomes that somatic piece. So it really depends on where people are coming and what they're bringing with them.
Paula And Jack Curtis (31:21)
and it can go so far back, you know, and when you're under the age of I think it's like seven or something in there, I'm there's some wiggle room, you're in that theta brainwave state where you really aren't everything is just taken as face value. And it's accepted without really a lot of questioning because you're just learning about the world. And so if you're taught things that are maybe not
healthy for you as an individual or going to serve you later on in life, that can be something that's way back in there that you don't even realize. And you're still living that out because that's, it's you. β
Darci (31:56)
It's you. It's your product. Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. There's a really interesting neuroscience article that came out today and was talking about how mapping kids brains, even in their teens and early 20s, who have come just even just from verbal abuse, right, just this constant deprecating them, making them feel less than shaming them a lot. Literally, when we put them under functional MRI machines and things like that, we can see which parts of their brain light up during stress, which part and it's it is amazing because I was
so dependent, I couldn't chest question, I couldn't push it, it's always this I need a sense of safety. And if I'm dependent on you, and you are my only sense of safety, I don't have the ability to stand up for myself. Well, can I take somebody now, walk them back there and help them give a sense of safety to that nervous system. And it takes a little bit of time because we're creating a new neural pathway, we're creating a new way of being. But it's not one of those things that takes forever, right? It's
Somatic work and NLP work, certain pieces of it are really empowering. And once you've got that tool down, once you've had some help to start creating a good new path and you know how you did it, you can start to work on it more and more and more by yourself. And then every now and then you might need a partner to walk with you. But then there's so much, you have tools and you understand your physiology, your biology. And you're like, oh, oh, there's that pattern again.
great awareness. Alright, so how do I bring safety to that so that my breath work works and you know that the stuff we do with peripheral vision works and I yeah, I I got this. We're okay. Like I can be a good coach for myself. I can support myself and then I'm a better equestrian, better rider, better trainer.
Paula And Jack Curtis (33:38)
It's neat because, you know, just like our horses can come out of bad situations and learn, you know, their nervous system is so plastic and their brain, we are too. And so with the tools that you offer people, you can make changes and you can make progress. And it does not have to, you don't have to be the static you. You can be this ever growing and evolving person that is, that is
constantly getting better and better and better. I'm curious, you know, oftentimes people in your place have had stuff in their life that have caused them to be curious and to have to make changes themselves. And when you do do that inner work yourself, your understanding obviously grows. So can you tell us a little bit about your story and how you got to this place that you're at right now?
Darci (34:07)
Yeah, absolutely.
So I remember being at a competition in Europe and there was a gigantic cross-country fence and we had a sports psychologist that was traveling with us and I was like, man, like I do not see myself getting over this fence. it's just physical shutdown, negative chatter. I could see myself crashing and falling. I was all that.
And the psychologist that was working with us said, you need to stay in front of this fence until you see it. I never did see it. I think it would probably still be there. And so.
Then I started kind of getting interested in how do I interrupt that mind movie that's going on and how do I change that mind movie. So it was super primitive for me. But I started finding that it was making a difference. It was helping me to not spiral down that toilet of crash, doom, trauma, awful. it served me well.
but it wasn't enough. And then when I was doing a lot more coaching as I moved on, was finding I was doing a little more of that work with my clients as well. Again, I didn't have any concrete tools in place, but I was like, like that flickering light bulb, right? There's something here, there's something here.
And then I started teaching school and working with highly at-risk students, students who were pregnant and parenting teens, kids that were living on the streets, kids that had just been released from juvenile incarceration centers, and started doing, because we did a lot of counseling in that, I started doing a lot more somatic work. Then...
When my kids were competing, weren't equestrians, but they were both upper level competitors in their sports. I noticed that one of the things we did were like things seven days a week and they both had mental performance coaches. And I was like, what is this voodoo? But literally they would do all of these like really cool activities with the kids. thought, well, this is bizarre. Cause this is the stuff I do with my clients, my at-risk clients. And here they're bringing it to non really at-risk kids. Like these are parents who are very involved taking their kids all over.
the place to constant training and constant practice and constant competitions and recognize that there's still something in the background for some of them but they're not like the extreme cases that I was seeing with my educational clientele. And I found as I started using those tools more and more with my clients I was like,
I noticed when I was dysregulated because those kids are really challenging to work with, I could use those tools and I could show up and I could model and mentor and support those students. was like, this, this is what I needed when I was riding. This is what I needed when I had those really hard horses. I would get horses in for training and people would be like, this horse is a POS, I'm done with it, it's gone. And I would find he's not, like he's awesome, he's amazing. But I couldn't figure out how to bridge the story that
the owner had with that horse for them to... and I would have these goosebump moments of like this horse is awesome but I couldn't figure out how to bridge that for the owner of the horse and the horse so often. Like there's gotta be a way that I can bring this to them too so they can...
build that connection with their horse again or recognize that maybe they're not a fit and that horse can go somewhere else and there's maybe a different type because let's face it, we don't like everybody. We don't like every horse we encounter. Sometimes we're not the ideal fit, right? And that's okay. And so I just started, it started showing up for me. I have people very near and dear to me in my life who have significant mental health challenges that will be permanent mental health challenges. And I found I was bringing those tools to them. I was bringing them to my students at school.
I was bringing them increasingly to the horses that I was riding in training and I was bringing them increasingly to my clients and so many people started saying the work we're doing in the background is Changing what's happening for me when I'm riding at home by myself and it shows when my coach cannot be with me On my shoulder telling me every move I need to make I was like I actually Can be a really good coach to myself when I'm in these high-pressure moments. Oh Man, I wish I'd had them coming up to that great
But I'll take it now. So yeah, it's been a long slow evolution of seeing all these pieces with very different parts of what I do and putting them together into a pathway that helps, know, equestrians, like I said, whether they're novice newbies, whether they're people coming back after something not so wonderful, or whether they're upper level riders who've just been rattled. I mean, I think of so many of the upper level riders, they look so confident, right? like, they know what they're
They have just as much negative chatter. They have just as much fear of judgment. They have just as much worry as you do. They just have a few more tools or they have better quality courses with more training. They have access to more help and they're just sliding through whereas you're struggling more. But we all have it. All of us have it. Welcome to being a human being. Right? And it's not just my time in the tack. It's how I relate to those challenging clients and to my family members.
and to that jerk at work. Literally, when we work on our nervous system and our brain, it changes who we are. It changes our identity, it changes how our brain communicates between brain and body, and I have more resources. So I have more opportunities to feel more satisfied, hopefully even more joyous, with whatever I'm doing instead of letting that...
And then not so nice to, you know, any or any, anyone or anything.
Paula And Jack Curtis (39:40)
Well, this would be a good place to lead into your presentations for the horse fair this year.
Darci (39:46)
Yeah.
So I did two different presentations for this year's. One of them is looking at anxiety and fear and what those things are and how they manifest. So A, to give you little bit of understanding of biology and how your brain and body work and give you some tools for that. So that's dealing with the really hard stuff. And then the other one that I dealt with was talking about confidence. So confidence is kind of a tricky term because you can be super confident
and not perform well and you can not be confident and perform amazingly. The quality of what you bring to your rides each day is not predicated on confidence, but everybody wants confidence. So how can we really understand what it is and what are some very specific concrete tools we can do to build our confidence, build our confidence toolkit so we recognize that I don't have to be feeling awesome, I don't have to be feeling confident to still be able to bring my best, right?
It's like me riding into a draw slash test and there's, when I was competing, for me at the time, the big names were all around there riding. was like, okay, well, know, doesn't matter how often awesome my horse is, my draw slash score is gonna be if I'm lucky, upper middle of the pack.
Well, I'm already stuck, right? I've already got this so much chatter. I'm already distracted from my pattern. And you go from having these amazing rides at home to not such amazing rides at shows. And to understand that, to understand what confidence really is and to build that toolkit, I think is, again, one of those things that we all need it. But I just think we have a misunderstanding about what confidence really is. So those are the two sessions I talked about. One, what's confidence? So I can show up with more and perform whether I have it or not.
What about if it's more than not just being confident? What if there is some anxiety fear and stress behind it? So they're sort of both sides of this really interesting scale.
Paula And Jack Curtis (41:34)
And I think that's so important for people to hear because I think a lot of people do think that, you know, when you get to this place, all of a sudden it all goes away and it's just going to be fine. And no, just it gets better. And it's always a progression. You're always learning. You're always growing. And you're fine where you're at right now. And if you're here and you're watching this,
We know that you're growing and striving and looking in the right direction.
Darci (41:59)
I think we
all, know, you always want to be growing and changing and getting better. And as soon as we kind of feel like I know it all, right, I'm good, I'm sad, I'm wonderful. You never do. We have this Dunning-Kruger effect where I think I know everything. The more I learn, the more I find out I don't actually know. If you're here and you're satisfied here and this is your satisfaction, joyful spot, wonderful. But if you're
growing and evolving and you want more, that's also fabulous. But it doesn't matter where you are on that continuum. There are gonna be days where you're anxious and fearful and stressed, and days you're not feeling confident, and days where the mental chatter just won't quit.
We all get it. And the reality is you don't have to stay stuck. You don't need to, you know, feel like I can't, I'm not capable. I'm not competent. I need to send my horse out to another trainer. I need to take more lessons and more clinics. I need to, you know, my horse to someone else. Maybe that's true because we don't all fit. But the reality is most of the time that's not it. That story is not fact. That story is over.
predictions and brain patterns and a hijacked nervous system and you just need some tools and do the practice.
it.
Paula And Jack Curtis (43:22)
Darcy, where can people find you?
Darci (43:26)
They can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. I'm EpopsPerformance. And they can also head over to epopsperformance.com and I've got a freebie that they can grab. And its job is to help you understand a little bit about your nervous system and some of the stuff you're doing that...
you want to start to work on right away. it's just that very, remember the very first step is awareness. So it's an interesting tool. It teaches you just a little bit quite simplistically about your nervous system. And then there's some prompts and stuff in there for you to start to figure out a little bit of stuff about yourself. So it's not too huge and overwhelming. It's pretty small, but it's a good dip your toe in to learn a little bit about you.
Paula And Jack Curtis (44:10)
And you'll have to get us a link to that. We can put that below the interview here. you'll just, if you're watching this on the Art of the Horseman site, just scroll on down and you'll find a link to that very helpful resource. Well, thanks, Darcy. We appreciate you being here.
Darci (44:22)
Yeah, awesome.
You're very welcome. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
