#12 Warwick Schiller, Performance Horses, On listening, Presence, Curiosity and going from knowing to learning.
Every now and then, you find someone who pierces through the noise of all the people vying for our attention with a message that is so clear and compelling, you just have to stop and listen. I found that person a few years ago in Warwick Schiller. Yes, in his videos he was talking about horses. But lots of people are on the internet talking about horses.
Warwick is different. He’s really talking about listening, presence and being. He’s sharing his personal transformation. Moreover, he’s not just talking – he’s showing and embodying something invisible that creates a change.
That’s what made me reach out to him for this conversation. Most of the conversations on this podcast are with people I know. Most of the people who invite Warwick on their podcast are people who make a living in the horse world. This conversation would be between two people from different worlds who don’t know each other.
The question going into the conversation was “where would we find the common ground?” and it did not take long. While a lot of people who listen to this podcast are in the horse world, I believe anyone who is on a journey of becoming a better version of themselves will find this conversation both deeply satisfying and perhaps challenging.
You will notice throughout that Warwick challenges himself both during the conversation and in the stories he tells. And he is super skilled at weaving lessons and themes into a meaningful narrative. Perhaps his most powerful lesson was taught to him by the horse who showed him he did not know what he was doing. With a curious mind and a commitment to listening, he discovered what a horse could teach him about himself.
In that way, this conversation is a master class in self-awareness.
Welcome to creative spirits unleashed where we talk about the dilemmas of balancing work and life. And now, here's your host, Lynn Carnes.
Lynn:Welcome to the creative spirits unleashed podcast. This is Lynn Carnes your host. today's conversation is with Warwick Schiller. He's well known in the horse world. As a horse trainer. He performed at the world Equestrian Games in 2018 for his native country of Australia. But mostly he's known for his videos on how to have a better connection with your horse. I reached out to him not to learn the horse stuff, although I love talking about that. I reached out to him because over time as I've watched his videos, I have seen him make a change and come To understand things about himself by using the horse as a mirror that's so similar to what's been happening with me over the last couple of years. So I had to talk to this man who feels like he's on a similar journey to the journey I'm on. And in fact, we found a lot of common ground in this conversation. Most of it is not about horses directly, but in a lot of cases is because of what we've learned from working with horses. Of course, he's at a much higher level than I am. And I was very interested in learning more about what he's learned. So you're going to learn a lot in this conversation, there's going to be a couple of huge themes. Listening is going to be huge, you're going to hear a lot about that. And being the person that always got the feedback that I needed to listen better. It's very good for me to hear from somebody who's a good listener. He also talks a lot about presence, which is that sort of ethereal thing, I've always like struggle With that word because it's like, well, what does it really mean? And he talks about that in this particular podcast. So I think you're gonna find this to be a really, really interesting conversation. Not to mention, he is a phenomenal storyteller. So he knows how to make a point through story as well as anybody I have ever heard. And you will, you know, when you see how long this conversation is, you're going to see how interested I was in just continuing to hear his stories and I know he's got even more. So I encourage you to check him out on the web, and listen to some of his stories even if you're not a horse person to hear what he has to say about listening and learning from horses. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. It's almost like a masterclass in self awareness. And, as always, be sure and share this with your friends. And if you have comments, which often is true for me after I listened to somebody podcast, there's a feature on my website if you go to the pie if you go to LynnCarnes.com, Then go to the podcast button. There is a little voicemail button, it's actually not that little on the right hand side of the website. And you can actually click on that and leave me a voicemail and let me know what you learned what you liked, and what you want to talk about. So please check it out. Thanks, Warwick. Welcome to the podcast.
Warwick:Thank you so much for having me.
Lynn:I'm so happy to do this. I am. I've thought a lot about how I want to start this conversation. And so I'm going to start with my own really wrong beliefs about horses. And what started for me is I grew up in Texas. I was the girl that was horse crazy. begged my parents for a horse used to draw horses, rode them every chance I got which was not nearly enough and went to rodeo and finally got my dad to buy me a horse. I think we might have owned it for three months before it went running up on my mother One day while she was fishing and the question she asked me was, did you mean to do that? The answer at that point I realized was unwinnable? Because maybe I did, maybe I didn't. But obviously, I was in trouble either way. I didn't know how bad so I actually, I don't even know if I would have been lying when I said no, I didn't mean to do that. Or Yes, I did. I think I said, No, I didn't mean to, and they sold the horse because they were like, this kids in eighth grade, and she can't control the horse. So they sold the horse probably saved my life. Then I went 40 years without having anything to do with horses really. And then Tryon Equestrian Center moved down the road from me. I started a lot of my friends have horses, I thought I knew how to ride horses. So we went out one day on the trail second time in 40 years to kind of go out on a trail ride like this. Horse got away from me. It threw me. This is a perfectly supposed to be a perfectly broken horse with perfect manners. And he got going a little fast and I tried to stop him with the only tool I had, which was woah and pull back on the reins. He kept going and off I went three days in the hospital, broken collarbone pneumothorax collapsed lung. And my ego was more than bruised. But then I came to realize that everything I thought I knew about horses was wrong. I think I treated them like machines like, Okay, this horse is trained. So this is go this is Whoa, this is left. This is right. That's it. You just have to have a horse that's broken, and follows those four rules and everything will be fine. Now I understand that's different. But what my question for you is, how often do you run across people like me who bought a horse that don't know what the hell they're doing? They get themselves in trouble or even people who think they know horses that have succeeded for a while, eventually come to realize maybe they're operating with the wrong set of beliefs. Like, just I'm gonna shut up and let you riff on that because I know you probably have some thoughts
Warwick:I'd say that's most people I get to deal with but are one of the you know, one of those two, either the first one which you said, you know, yeah, I'm just going to get a horse and ride it and all sudden you realize that you hadn't traveled Oh, people that have had horses for quite a while and I think, you know, this, it's quite a journey, this whole this whole thing, but like, you know, when you first get a horse, like I was gonna get trail riding you know, just trail riding is like, just jumping out of a plane. That's long as nothing goes wrong. It's, it's really, really easy. But you've got to make sure there's quite a bit of preparation for not to get it wrong. So, you know, there's a lot of people like that, but then one of my clients are people who have been around horses for quite a while and they kind of get a bit stuck with, excuse me, with one particular horse. And this is what happened for me too was that then then you get to realize, oh, there's so much more to this than, you know, you like you get out. You think you're at the top of the hill and you get over the hill and you realize, oh, there's another mountain in front of it, you know, like, like, like everything in life.
Lynn:I, I'm actually coming to realize that because when I started slalom skiing, the belief I had, I didn't know how to go around. I didn't know how to cut and go around a buoy. And I saw somebody do that one day, I was like, well, as soon as I can learn how to get my ski around that buoy. I don't understand what the rest of this problem is where you shorten the rope. Like, what's so hard about that? And it was 10 years before I could shorten the rope. You know, it was actually almost almost five years before I could go around six buoys in consecutive order. So it was this illusion that like I was at the mountaintop and you're not like Like you said, So you said you You said it was something that you discovered like you had this horse that all of a sudden, all your rules didn't work for what happened there?
Warwick:Now about five years ago, my wife bought a new reining horse. And we bought him sight unseen of a friend of mine. Now normally, I wouldn't buy a horse sight unseen, but this friend of mine who's from Australia lives in Texas. He's one of the best reining trainers in the world. And I've spent a lot of time with him, excuse me, I know exactly how he trains I can follow his program very well. And Robin was looking for a new reining horse and he had this horse for sale. And he was probably about his price was about a third of what it would be, If he could get him shown this horse was a phenomenal athlete, but it's friend of mine good and getting what we call getting him shown meaning go in the rain and get through the whole pattern with nothing going wrong. Because he speaks at the judges chairs and things like that. Mm hmm. And his friend of mine is an amazing reining trainer but doesn't really doing it that horsemeny shippy be stuff like doesn't really fix other things. He fixes the reining. And I thought, well, it'd be a lot of virgin territory in this horse. It's not like someone who was really good at fixing those sorts of problems, has tried it and failed. I know this horse hasn't had a lot of that sort of work done. So it's like I can fix that. But you know, we watched the video, and like this horse is amazing. And we're going home. And I hear that the spooken bit, that was easy, but what I found was this horse was just very, very shut down and like, lights are on no one's home sort of thing. And he was functional as far as far as reining goes. But would get the level of tightness in him that prevented him from doing his job as good as he could like doing the reining as good as he could. He could do all the hard stuff, but just that level of tightness he carried while he was doing it would incur penalty points in different places and preventing him from being a superstar. But what I found was nothing I had learned at the time, worked with him because at the time, I don't know it's five years ago. So you know, I was doing clinics all around the world. My YouTube channel was great. My young, you know, I presented hosted experts around the world, people actually believe what I have to say, and what I do works and up to that point in time, and I've been working, so I'm quite happy on the path I'm on. And yeah, I just couldn't. I just couldn't get into this horse's head at all. And he really made me stop and rethink things. You know, I didn't keep trying to change anything about him. Because I realized pretty early on that I didn't know how to do that. So it wasn't like, well, I'm just gonna keep pounding away. I was like, well, I'll just step away from that, but he really made me look, look at different things like things outside the lane. Which I currently viewed everything through. You know, I'd always been learning stuff. Mm hmm I was learning stuff more of the same looking through the same lens and he made me look outside that lens completely outside that lens and basically Yeah, there's a big old story to it. But yeah, basically led me to go on like a personal development journey because of the things I discovered and if I hadn't been for him, I'd still be the same person I was five years ago, which I'm definitely a long way from that.
Lynn:So was there with him? Was there like, a moment like you realize that what you did wasn't going to work with him? And in that moment, like what was your What was your inner dialogue around taking all these tools that you knew worked? And then trying to apply it to the one who it didn't work for? Like, what was what was that like on on in kind of in your inner world in terms of the dialogue with yourself about Wait, why is this not working? Did you have a moment of truth Did you have to
Warwick:didn't have the moment of truth yet. But, you know, horses it's a bit you know, it's a diagnostic thing training horses, like you've got this thing to work on. And so, you know, I'm not big on fixing problems. I'm really big on figuring out what the cause of that problem is. Because most horse problems are symptoms, they're not the actual issue. And so, you know, you just work your way backwards. And with him, I'd go backwards just now that's not working. I'll go back a step. There's no, there's no way to get back is that I kind of got all the way back to the very beginning. And I couldn't find a starting point. That's probably the big thing was like, you know, so it wasn't like, just one moment, but it was like, you know, as you do all the diagnostic stuff, okay, well, that's not working. Let's try. Let's break it down. Let's try this. Let's not work. Let's break it down. Let's try this and it's almost like a gun all the way back to the very, very starting point. And that's when I realized, you know, like I said, the lights are on me. No one's home. And so that's when I'm like, Okay, I'm not gonna try to do anything to change this horse, you know, we'll just leave him as he is. But I think that got me. Like I said, looking outside the the lens with which I viewed everything through.
Lynn:So it sounds to me like you changed yourself then, when you couldn't change the horse you changed yourself.
Warwick:No, don't think that happened at that point in time it has happened. Okay. Okay.
Lynn:So, so what did happen at that point in time, like I'm so interested in the spark because what I, what I'm hearing is it's almost like you were on one path and then something caused you to pivot even if it was a couple of degrees to the right or the left. And I'm always getting what makes people pivot.
Warwick:And is it well, initially, this horse made me pivot but it wasn't about me pivoting at the time. It was about me maybe looking for other things and, you know, just looking for something outside the lens which had been viewing through and I think I think you know, when the teachers or when the students ready the teacher appears. And so I was presenting at a horse Expo in LA. And those horse expos, sometimes most of the time, you're doing a demo in an arena with a with a horse, but sometimes you're doing like a stand up, Talk sort of thing, you know? Yeah. And I had to do one of those. And so I went, you know, I went down to the place where I supposed to do it. And I was a little bit early, and the person who was on before me was running over time a little bit. So I'm sitting there and I'm listening to the person who was there before me and this girl, she's from Texas, and she has worked for some really big time horse trainers and really knows how to train a horse and she actually worked for the trainer who had this horse that I couldn't get through to his name Sherlock. She actually worked for the training that Sherlock when he was younger. And so I know she knows how to train a horse the way at the time, I know how to train a horse. And her talk was on clicker training. And I'm Listening to it. And you know, I hadn't really looked into clicker training at the time, or positive reinforcement training. Thats called clicker training. I hadn't really looked into that at the time, because I was thinking that was for people who don't know how to train a horse. Okay, crazy cat ladies, I used to refer to them as like that's the crazy cat lady people you know. And I know this this girl knows how to train a horse really well. And she's talking about clicker training and I sat there listen to her quite a bit and I was almost like, you know the process the training anyway, it doesn't matter which way you do it is the same. It's a building block thing you know, the way a mechanic diagnoses the problem with your car is the same way you train a horse. Okay, you figure out what's what parts not working, you go back, you remove that part, you fix it, you put it back in, it doesn't work and you figure that sort of thing. And so listening to her, and I know what she's gonna say next oh yeah, that's the same as what I do. You know, it's the same process but it's was different but When she got finished with the thing, and she handed me the microphone, I said, Hey, I want to talk to you about this stuff you're gonna aound and she has all come over to your booth. So I did the demo, whatever I did whatever I talked about. And then she came out of the booth. And she sat down with us for about two hours. And I was asking all sorts of questions about it. And I said, what's the what's the big deal about clicker training? Why clicker training, if you can do the other stuff she goes, because it really comes at a horse's brain from a totally different angle. And so if you got one that because of some experience that they had in the past, they're like, not into what you're doing. She says it's really good, for them and like, so I told her about Sherlock, she is Yeah, he'd be the perfect candidate for that. So that's probably the first pivot, where I started doing something that I'd never ever considered. I'm never gonna do that. That's, that's those people. And so yeah,
Lynn:no judgment there at all.
Warwick:No judgment. Am I crazy cat man in. Yes. That was The beginning of it and then and then I think that made me start looking at other things and other things and other things that weren't in that, that lens that I've been looking through. And I read an article one time and it just it just resonated with me and it's really got me thinking about listening instead of asking, you know, listening to the little things horses do horses tell us so much if you know what to look for human people go to but you, so I so I did a clinic in I can't remember what year that was 2017 I did it so it must have been 2016 the whole clicker training. So I did a clinic in Texas in the beginning of 2017. And there was a girl at the clinic had a Mustang and he's nine years old has been out of the world for about six years. And she has, she has a random bolting problem now bolting is quite dangerous. You want to fix but usually I don't usually think, you know usually bolting backing and raring problems are not a problem at all because they're just a symptom of the problem. All you got to do is figure out what the what the cause is and you solve that. You know, the big things are not usually a big thing. So this all says a random halting problem. And he I said so, okay, so what triggers ? I have no idea and a lot of people say that but a lot of people not terribly observant about things, but her trainer who helps her with this horse was in the clinic as well and, and she's pretty handy you know, she knows what she's doing. And I said, What do you think she has? I've seen it. There is no trigger. Hmm. It could be something is fine, One day, the next day it triggers it or he could just bought it No way. Like there's not a sound. There's not a movement, your own rules and once again,
Lynn:not a quail coming. out from under the horse. We
Warwick:know nothing. It could be. It could be something, it could be nothing, but there's no one particular circumstance and that's difficult to diagnose, you know? And, you know, it's a little bit like when you take your computer to the computer, and so it does this and it won't do it for him. You know, it's difficult to diagnose. And it was a three day clinic and the first day we just did some groundwork with him. I forget what happened, you know, was that blahs I went on, nothing really happened. And at the time, my clinic I always have 12 horses in the clinics. But at the time, I was doing a morning group an afternoon groups are six in the morning, six in the afternoon, and he was in the in the morning group. I don't remember what happened the first morning, the second morning she brought him in. And she was doing some basic groundwork with one of the things she was going to ask him to do was what we call disengage behind so she's going to walk down the side of him and use some energy and some intention, maybe a little bit of pressure to get him to step over behind crises in In this case to be left on foot because on the left side, crushes left hind foot in front of his right hand foot. When horses are tense and tight, they will tend to step together like that. Because the thing that's kept horses alive for thousands of years our ability to push off with both hind feet, they don't have big sharp teeth or claws or anything running is their go to. And so I have a horses, you ask a horse to move over sideways and they stick together. They're basically saying I retain the right to run away. But if you can get him to just cross and uncross those feet, so that hind foot goes in front of that one, they've kind of gone Okay, I'll sign the release to say, I've given up my need to run away so it's a good gauge of where they are mentally. Mm hmm. And so she was working on that. And then she said to me, Hey, can you come here for a second starting to block me out? So when she was she'd start in front of him and she'd go to walk down beside him. And he turns his head, well, I don't want you to go down there, which sometimes happens. A lot of times it happens because the people And we get into this stuff later, but the people get mentally ahead of himself so your horse can really read your mind. What a lot of people do is they have the intention when they leave the front that they're going to walk down the side. And they're going to ask the horse to step over behind and what tends to happen is as they go to walk down that side The horse steps over behind as they do it so their head ends up in front of you, but they're not you know, that's that's what happens a lot of times because you've really got to be able to come up compartmentalize, mentally think I'm going to walk around the side and when you get there, then I'm going to but you can't have that second thing in your mind when you leave because they'll get ahead of you.
Lynn:Because the horse can actually read your mind.
Warwick:Oh, hell yeah.
Lynn:Yeah, I didn't agree. I want to talk about that again in a minute to put a bookmark on that. But
Warwick:there's a there's a lot of that stuff. But yeah,
Lynn:I want to I definitely want to hear about that. But let's, I want to hear how you solved that blocking problem.
Warwick:happening. You know, I said to Hannah was lady's name. He said, Let's see and she went to walk in that side, but he just bent his head and blocked her out. He didn't pivot So I knew it wasn't that bit. So let me just try this for a second I took the lead rope. And in the past, if I went to walk down the side of a horse and they blocked me out with their head, what I would do is very gently reach under their saw and just move their head over. So now I'm on that side. Mm hmm. Okay, that kind of kind of trying to keep you on one side of them in one hour. Yeah, just reach under, excuse me. And now I'm standing here and I'm on that side of them, that's what I would normally do. And so anyway, there's no repercussions would be no repercussion for it. There's no punishment or anything like that. That's not the way I do things. But I didn't even do that I went to walk in that's it blocked me out. And so I stepped back to the front of him as if to say, I saw your concern and I just stood there for a minute. And I waited till he showed me some sign of being a little more relaxed. And I think at the time probably what I look for, so horses, when they get tense, the more tense they get, the slower they write a blinking gets. Mm hmm. They actually stopping Up the stairs when you're tense, okay? And there is we'll also fixate like fixate probably what I call fixate inwardly meaning there ears they're not pinned ears but they kind of hear they're not there they'll be fixated outwardly that's like if they're worried about something, they tend to fixate inward and are you know, so I waited till the either started to blink again or as he started to move, I can't in which one it was, but show me some sign of being less concerned. Not that he was looked terribly concerned when he was turning his head but I just stepped back and waited for that. Then I tried it again. I probably worked on that for about 10 minutes and after about 10 minutes, I could walk down the side of me he didn't block me. He didn't block me out. And then I thought, well, he's he's been ridden for six years. Okay. So I'm sure I could touch him. Yeah, he would have just didn't decide he's with us. So I just reached out when to put my hand on his on his with a like that or your neck. And as I But close right there. His head raised very slightly. And so I took my hand away and I stepped back and I waited for once again a blinker and he flicked to something other to me. He was more relaxed. He did that for about five or 10 minutes I can I can't remember which and then after what I can touch him, he doesn't tighten up at all. So walk back to the front, walk around the side touching side and do those two things. And then I asked him to disengage, which he does perfectly fine. He'd been trained well to do that. And I thought maybe it's the disengaging, doesn't like so if I go back to the front now and go to come around, he will say no, I don't want you to do that. But he didn't. He's perfectly fine. I can ask him to move over behind, walk back to the front or back around. And so I handed the rope back to him. So this is about 25 minutes that took me and I didn't really ask him to do anything apart from the disengaged. But the bit that we're having the trouble with. I didn't fix it. I didn't ask for anything. I didn't correct anything. And so I hand the rope back to Hannah and she said what do you want me to do? And I said, well just hang with him a bit. I'll go help someone else to standing up. Soak that in. So I want to help somebody else in about 10 minutes later, there's a collective from everybody in the clinic and I turn and look and this horse has buckled at the knees and filled in his belly. And he says fast asleep with his nose in the dirt, like dust cloud can't be normal. And then he had a row, jumped up, looked around, buckled the knees and went down and went to sleep again. And I said to Hannah, Is that normal? She says, I've had this horse for six years, and I'm sitting laying down once. And he was way out in the pasture. When he saw me the distance he jumped up, but I never seen this horse lay down and I thought, well, that's interesting. And by this point in time, was about 1030 in the morning, and he slept till lunchtime. So I slept for about an hour and a half in the arena with horses riding around the loudspeaker the whole bit. He was unconscious for an hour and a half. So we worked him up to, you know, stop for lunch, you know, get to know the next group and she put him away and the next morning she brought him in again, so that third morning in the clinic and she said what are we gonna do with him? I said I just staying with him to see what he does or she stood there and about 15 minutes later, boom, down he went fast asleep, slept for four hours till lunchtime, just unconscious with horses riding past him. And I knew something had happened. I didn't know what it happened. But I knew this was a huge change for this horse. And I knew I didn't ask him to do anything. Hmm. Okay, I listened to what he had to say I didn't tell him anything. I was listening and I came home from them like I don't know what happened but something happened. And I looked up sleeping not sleeping habits or sleep requirements of horses and we all know horses can sleep standing up as well as laying down but what I didn't know was they can only nap standing up and so horses need about 30 minutes. 40 minutes of REM sleep a day. I don't need it all at one time. They can get it in 10 minute breaks. But they need to make that much REM sleep a day. And they can only get that REM sleep if they lay down. Oh, and they only lay down if they feel safe. what I realized was this horse probably has not had any REM sleep for a long time not felt safe and we we can ask a horse. Well, if you don't get enough REM sleep, how do you feel, but we know we humans, if you don't get enough REM sleep you either irritable or anxious. Mm hmm. And that it was profound to me because that was the first time I'd ever had a change in a horse that I didn't. It wasn't me, teaching him to do something. It was me listening to what he was telling me. And so it is now almost three years since that clinic and that horse has not bolted once. So think about bolting Mustang problem. It's a big problem. gotta fix this problem. We didn't fix anything. All we did was listen to what he had to say. And that was probably the catalyst to make me go. Whoa, there's way more of this stuff than I ever thought because up to that point in time, I was a horse trainer. I've trained them to do things, okay. It's my job to teach them my job to correct things, my job to shape things, my job to tell them what to do and how to do it. And that's my job. And from that really made me realize, wow, I don't I couldn't fix that by training him like that. The trainer that was there who helps her and her horse. She's handy. She knows and she can't fix it. And I won't I'm not saying I fixed it, but I facilitated it being better by listening. And that was that was probably my biggest aha moment. Was I didn't do anything except Listen, except let him have a voice and so what? So I think What makes horses feel safe in a herd situation? If someone goes and gets a horse out of a herd and leads them away from the herd the horse a lot of times is winning and run around. And you think, what is that? What is that herd of horses provide that I don't? Why are you upset now when you weren't upset over there with them in we tend to not really think about what it is. It's just all their horses so they like to hang out with them. That's what makes them feel safe. But what it's not it's not the physicality of the horses. So the horse, you know, in that herd of horses, there's not like some young buck stud horses to do push ups, I'm in karate and they protect us. It's not a physical protection. What I think horses feel safe in a herd environment is the awareness of all the other horses. You know, there's there's a group of horses right here, and they're all grazing. If something approaches from this side over here, the one on this side of the hood doesn't need to be aware of everything. This one over here, he will notice that his head will pop up, his energy will change and that energy change will ripple through that whole herd. This one go, something's going on. But he doesn't need to keep a lookout for everything. And a couple of years ago I was in Kenya doing some horse work there. Whoever's working with these horses was right this lady's place and she basically surrounded by 3500 3500 acres of I wouldn't call it wilderness, but it's unused land. Mm hmm. And so this herds has ever run on other places herds of wildebeest. I saw giraffe from my bedroom window one morning. he was off in the distance, but it wasn't like there was a giraffe sticking his head in the window or anything but I could see him from the window. And so while I was working with his horses, you could see these herds over there all the time and first thing in the morning my son is with me so we'd get up and before breakfast, we go for a walk and you can walk along and not get caught up a mountain come across and Big Herd of zebra So what I saw, they'd be doing that be all out there grazing. And as you approach and get closer to get to that bubble to where you're influencing them, the one on that side of the herd closest to you, he's head would pop up, and then all the other heads that pop up. I just stand there. As soon as that happened, if you just stand, stop, stand still and just kind of be present and focus on your breathing or whatever. Eventually, the one closest to his head will go down when he gets him that just goes through the whole herd and they just go back out. It's okay. And so it really made me realize how much that energy transmits through them, you know, like, only one has to just pick his head up and feel a bit tense and they all feel it and if you've ever been in a crowd of people like say, at a concert or maybe in a bar or something like that, and some sort of altercation breaks out Okay, like, let's say you're in a credit bar and there's a fight or something or other, you don't have to see it to know what's happened because that energy ripples through, like, what's going on what's going
Lynn:on, everybody's head comes up and says, Hey, you
Warwick:know, like, people start off or people start screaming or whatever, you know, that whole energy ripples through them. I really think horses are that way. And so what I think gives horses anxiety around people, is we do things in such a way to let them know we're not real observant. We're not real aware of what's going on around us. And that's, that's the whole safety thing. And so what I'm what I
Lynn:hang on, so those are like, we send a signal and or they send a signal, we ignore it, and they're like, Oh, they don't hear us. So
Warwick:but they didn't have to send a signal. You know, we talked about they can read your mind. So basically, they can tell that you're not present.
Lynn:Okay, so So,
Warwick:most of the time we're not present so what is known as present What is present present is your mind is thinking about what you're doing right now what's going on right now, instead of, you know, sometimes we're not present because we're three seconds ahead of what we're doing with three seconds behind, oh, wait two days behind or two days in the future or whatever. I really think they can sense that in us. And since I've really been working on this, the changes have been amazing, but I think that horse by me, letting him know I saw your hair instead of like, you know, if I went to walk down the side of the Tunis head now Excuse me. Yeah, it's kind of like I didn't I didn't even see that. You know, I didn't even I basically didn't pay any attention to the fact you told me that you're a little bit concerned about that. And so that's when they get to it. They go, okay, you just, you just want to have your way with me sort of thing. And so yeah, so that's, that's, I think what happened with that horse was just us letting us know letting him know that we see Little things and it wasn't a little thing is even much more things than that, but in turning his head 45 degrees. And me acknowledging that I saw it and waiting for him to feel a little bit better tells me I'm paying attention. And that's what made him feel safe enough to go well, if you pay that much attention, you would notice if the saber toothed Tiger was sneaking up on us, so I'm going to take the opportunity right now to go down have a sleep. When we're in Kenya was funny. zebras are like horses, they're social creatures. They're herd animals. But there was also wilderbeast around there. Okay. wilderbeast mile will debase the territorial so they don't travel all over the place, they have an area that they live in, and cows will come into that area and then they'll fight other bulls off to keep those cows there. But when the cows leave, then go with the cows. So there was a wilderbeast not very far from where I was working with the sources all the time. You know, they're solitary like that and he In a probably, maybe 10 acres is what he looked like he covered and when he laid down how to sleep, he'd always lay down up against the stand of, you know, some sort of thorny trees like Acacia or something or other so he'd lay down and have a nap. But he had one side of him protected so it's almost like you sleeping with one eye and looking at it here, but I don't have to look back there. Let's zebra I noticed. You know, when they when they grazing their all you know, their heads are all down but whatever, but whenever it's time for some of the zebra to light and have asleep, the others do not graze. grazing doesn't happen. Well, it's I'm asleeping when some will get in have asleep, the other ones stand around. They're not on high alert, they just standing around, but they're not grazing. Okay. And so, one day they zebra they were over closer to where I was working with the horses, and they, some of them lay down how to sleep. And the other ones, we're all kind of standing around and that wilderbeast when Ah, I'm gonna use this to my advantage. He walked in the middle and lay down and had a sleep. So he was using the awareness of the zebra to have a protective sleep. He didn't have to. That was the first time I saw him not lay down up against a tree.
Lynn:Wow, he used the zebras. He is ramaa safety.
Warwick:Yeah. And so he went in there later and had a big old snooze, too. And yeah, it was pretty cool watching that. And I don't think even at the time, I totally got it. But the more I think about what I saw like, yeah, that's exactly what I saw. So yeah, so that's, you know, my big thing these days with with like, with the horses, we get into that, but is about being present. I mean, that's the, I think a lot of times we have to train horses, to change a lot of their behaviors. And the behaviors came about because we are not present and that gives them anxiety, excuse me, and gives them anxious behaviors and then we go To try them out and not have those anxious behaviors. Whereas I realize now we're the problem in the first place.
Lynn:I can see that it seems to me like, as I, as I was listening to that story, what struck me is, and I think this applies in, in the human world as well, that you use listening is a form of influence.
Warwick:And it's definitely a form of enough it's a form of influence, I suppose influences and but influences them in a positive way as in it makes them feel safe and right. If you think about the way very small and fragile and they're rather big, so if they don't feel safe, and they're exhibiting, you know, worried sort of behaviors, those sorts of things, they can get us, you know, they can get us hurt.
Lynn:They always can, as we, you know,
Warwick:as you talked about with the horse bolted down. Yeah,
Lynn:but, so here's like, here's the here's the analogy that I thought of when you were describing the horse. Turning its head and blocking you out from going down the side. And then you listen, as opposed to pressing on is I been in countless meetings for I've seen somebody send a signal that says you might not want to do that. And in the corporate world is because if you send that memo, it's got a mistake in it or, if you will, to the point of being really big. The Space Shuttle disasters happened when some parts of the organization didn't listen to the other parts of the organization. Engineers are going, Hey, we've got a problem with the O rings. And the higher ups are like, now we're going to move your head aside. We're going to go there anyway.
Warwick:We're going to move on to anyway, yep,
Lynn:we're going to force it and I've had this happen to me many times. I've done it to people, I've walked over them and said, I'm not listening to you because I know better. And it just strikes me that when you stop and actually listen than what you've done, it's not that you're enforcing or manipulating but what you're saying is okay, now we're going to exchange information together. We're going to work you and I can now work together. I'm not going to do something to you. It's what maybe the horse is hearing is that does that resonate? Am I getting it? Because I'm learning obviously.
Warwick:Yeah, and and i don't think i don't think the horse is gonna go, I don't want you to do something to me. Okay, I wanted the thing they want to do is feel safe first. Right? Like I said, a lot of times the first interactions we have with horses we're not present. And so they learn not to feel safe around us. Then they had to catch or whatever it's like oh, just horses are like that. Why would a horse one allow Why would a prey animal one allow a predator to catch them? But when you change that in when you have a paradigm shift and you realize that's not it, it's not that they don't want to be around us. They don't want to be around sentient beings who are not present?
Lynn:Yeah, that energy like the horse trainer I've been working with for the last few months, when I go to catch the horse, she says Your job is not to catch the horse, your job is to get the horse to catch you. And that's going to come from your energy. Yeah, what's better sometimes than others? And it's usually I can usually look inside and go, Well, there I am not being completely present.
Warwick:Now. Yeah, but I really, I'm really starting to think that the present part of it is the most important part. Because what, you know, what used to happen was, you know, it was a horse trainer for a long time. I don't train horses for the public anymore, so I'm not really a horse trainer anymore. What used to happen was people bring your horse that has problems and then, you know, you fix those problems. But what I realized now is a lot of those problems come from just as not being present random. Now it sounds like it's, it can't be that simple, but it is that simple.
Lynn:Except for being present, especially in this modern world, as a lot harder than it looks?
Warwick:Oh, yeah, I think you know, I think a lot of, you know, you think about think about, you know, in 600 bc Lao Tzu said, if you're depressed, you're living in the past if you're anxious, you're living in the future. And if you are at peace, you are living in the present. And you know anything about mental health is a big topic these days and all that, you know, anxiety and depression both have to do with not be right here, right now. And I think that's one of the cool things about horses because when you get to a certain point, then you're trying to get along with him. That's all you're working on. Everything's based off that and so it's it's, you know, it's they're almost like mental health practitioners in that in that
Lynn:I couldn't I couldn't agree with you more. I've been doing some work with a guy named Bruce Anderson, who's got a his business is actually called natural healing. And ship and I worked with him for nine months on the ground with horses before I even made a decision to get back on a horse.
Warwick:It's a natural human ship on natural lessman ship
Lynn:he calls his natural human ship.
Warwick:Okay, so there's another one.
Lynn:And and it comes, you know, natural We know you're familiar, I'm sure with natural horsemanship as a way of working with horses, but his view is to put you under pressure and to use the horse as the form of pressure to let you actually work out in the moment what's going on instead of going into your past. I've started calling it I'm going to reach for my tools instead of my rules. So if I reach for my rules that's what I figured out that I thought I knew in the past that may not be working right now and I my first time in the round pan he asked me to coil a Lariat and I come with this great I call it the corporate I've got this face which is never let them see you sweat never let them see you afraid I'm going to be calm, except for it's really just a cover up for franticness happening on the inside. So as I'm trying to call the Lariat, which you're very familiar, it's like a garden hose, it requires a certain kind of twist, it was not coiling. Nice, I'm supposed to call it with no tension in the line and there was a lot of tension in the line. And I'm just in the round pen with a horse. She's 30 feet away from me. And initially, she just started walking. And I'm not really noticing it because I'm like, looking at him going, I'm going to get this right, I've got this. And then as my pressure built inside, she starts chronic, and I'm not sending any signals at all. And then she starts running, at which point she's now got my attention. That's how far out of it I was. The horse had to do a couple of circles almost. And then she starts kicking her heels up. And finally at this point, Bruce realized that had enough and he said, Hey, well, what's going on? And it was really for me to learn to be present in the moment. But what what I came to realize is all that cover up that we think we're doing. That's just bullshit. We're not doing that. We're not covering up anything. Even people can read it. We think people can't read it, but they can. They might not know what it is.
Warwick:Yeah, I think I think horses are really good at reading. Really good at reading in congruent behavior where you're you know, you know, you're at a landscape and you're the landscape don't match up and I don't know if it's true, but I think the reason they're really good at reading that is because if you've ever watched like a National Geographic thing, and there's a herd of zebra in the grass, and there's a lion walking past in the background, and he's gone to the watering hole for drink, okay, zebra doesn't pick the heads up. Right is a lawn walking past and I think the reason why is because the line, physically is going to the water Hold for drink internally, mentally, he's gone to the watering hole for drink. But if that lawn was gonna go, I'm gonna pretend I'm walking to the waterhole for drink. But I'm gonna get one of these zebras here. I think the energy changes. You know, I think I think that as a prey animal part of their survival has been able to detect the difference between walking to the watering hole inside and outside and walking to the watering hole on the outside, but on the inside, I'm kind of planning on eating one of you for breakfast. And I really think that horses really pick up on in congruent behavior. You know, when you're, when you're in a landscape and your landscape doesn't match up, and I have a friend of mine from New Zealand. We'll probably talk about her later on, because she's got something to do with the weight story but she is a horse riding mindset coach. She's a horse riding mindset coaches watch. Emotionally she deals with people dealing with fear about horses, but she also works in competition. But she says that the whole fake it to make it thing, especially with horses is BS. Because Oh true doesn't work. You bet. I think you're better off with a horse being completely authentic and saying, look, you scare the hell out of me. They can deal with that. But the whole I've Got it. Don't Got it. Got it. don't Got it. So the thing that I think that sounds a little bit Cuckoo.
Lynn:I think it sends people Cuckoo. I mean, what you just described about the lion walking to the watering hole. And I'm thinking about so many times I've been working with somebody and they're asking me to do something. And this is especially back when I was working. I worked for a big bank. But I'm coaching people in this world all the time. And it's like, the intention that you're telling me you're doing versus the intention that I feel like you really mean are different. And that worries me. Now, I've done I've actually got a book in with the editor right now and I did a TED talk on the idea of assuming positive intent because What I've learned is if you actually focus on what even if they've only got like 1% of I'm going to the watering hole and 99% of I'm going to come eat you, if you focus on that 1% of the positive, you're more likely to get that. Or you, you lose the sneak attack part, and everybody else can see that person's out to get you and they kind of take care of it. But I think that's a very good analogy for what we see happening and a lot of our relationships, a lot of our businesses I don't know, have you drawn that parallel? or experienced that?
Warwick:I'm late to the game so
Lynn:I don't know about that.
Warwick:I'm playing catch up but yeah, no, no,
Lynn:you haven't experienced Well, I don't
Warwick:I haven't seen that. But you know what, what? What that horse that was very shut down. When we get into this later but what that horse that was really shut down taught me was I learned that I was really really shut down. You know, I don't have very good intuition, especially around people, because I've been so shut down and blocking everything out for so long I, you know, now I'm starting to receive stuff but I'm not sure how to interpret things like that. So I'm, I'm new to the game.
Lynn:I do understand that. It's interesting because the, I mean, I talked about shut down like back, I had the same experience that I was, I thought I was so aware. And what I realized is that I've done a really good job of putting on a really strong set of armor that kept me like really, really protected. That made me feel like I was in the know, but really all I was was just locked. Like I was locked inside and I couldn't feel and so I had a coach that asked me to feel something one time, she said Something like, well, Lynn, where do you feel sadness in your body? Like I said, she said, Where do you feel sadness? I said, Oh, I, I don't know. I feel sad when such and such happens. And when I watch a movie, and I gave her all this head answers, she was all want to know physically where you feel it. And I'm like, What do you mean where I feel it? I make sure I don't feel it. It's There. It's there, but you got to feel it. And I, I could not. And we went, we went through a scan of a lot of things like that. And what we had to realize is that I was so I was personally so shut down and so unable to feel that the only way I could get a physical sensation was just, I was scared to death of heights. Still not over that one. But standing on something high would create the physical sensation of falling. And I started using that as a deliberate way to open up my sensations to other things. So it looks like that's resonating with you.
Warwick:He Yeah. And so yeah, you know, anyways. So in my lifetime, up until a couple years ago, the only things I felt were I felt heartbreak, I felt being in love and I felt fear and dread in the pit of my stomach. That's it, nothing else. Wow. And so I've always been a romantic and now in why is because that's the only thing I got any feedback from? Sure, you know, I mean positive feedback from and it's interesting you know that we don't have a class at school that you know when you're in grade school that says so if you're a fully functioning human being you should feel sensation, unit sensation units and essentially there is no class for that. So if no one's ever told you, you're supposed to have that. You don't know what to think. You know what I mean? I agree,
Lynn:like you're feeling it. And then you just make up a story about what It means that kind of becomes your rule for the rest of your life. In my case, whatever that means, I don't want to feel it. So let's just shut it down.
Warwick:Oh, I see. I think mine was shut down so early that I've never felt it. So it's not like I felt it and didn't want to feel it. Going. I can't remember.
Lynn:Wow,
Warwick:yeah, as in stuff happened when I was really young, but which I'm just now learning about. But yeah, like if someone said, Oh, someone ran over my dog ago, I feel sorry for you. I didn't feel sorry for them. I didn't have a visceral sensation. I would think you know, sorry for them. Yeah, I thought that's what feeling was. Right. You know, you say if someone says something, I think to myself, Oh, I wouldn't like that if that happened to my dog. So you say I feel sorry for you but I never felt sorry for them. I thought sorry for them. I thought, Oh, I feel sorry for you because that must not. That's not that's not a good thing. But I was thinking it was in here. Not in here. Yeah, that's Yeah, that's that's my young.
Lynn:Well, he's well, no, that's, I mean, to me, this is where this is where all the work is because for the early stages like I was in eighth grade when I, I think I first shut down my intuition, I was really wanting to be a popular girl. I was talking to a friend in the kitchen, I got that little I've now come to start calling it the negative positive pole. I learned that language from Bruce in the round pen, but it's that sensation of electricity going through you. It's a physical feeling. And it was a feeling of danger when I was speaking with this woman, you know, she's now a woman, she was a girl at the time. She said something and I thought, I, I it was an incongruent behavior. And I didn't, she was a popular kid and I wanted to be her friend. So rather than going, that's a very interesting piece of information about you. I'm not going to watch out because you're trying to get some advantage over me. Instead, I was Like better to ignore this and I've had to do a lot of digging to get to this awareness like I've done a lot of journaling and memory remembering and so forth. But I was like better to ignore that so I can be popular because you can give me something I want which is popularity, which we can talk about that is, you know, a whole nother Why would I want that so badly. But I I think I deliberately almost like turned the battery or the volume loss knob down so low that day that I've never wanted to feel that again. Because I didn't know what to do with it. So better just to ignore it was my take. But isn't it isn't that the way we all got formed? Things happen to us. And as kids, we're trying to figure out what to do with them whether it's memory pre memory or not. And then now that's become our rules for the rest of our life.
Warwick:Yeah, most certainly, you know, I always thought I had the perfect childhood and I have always messed up as the next person. Why, you know, because yeah, nothing happened. The things that happened it seemed like though nothing, or actually something. Yes. So yes,
Lynn:it does happen I had. I was reading a book, this was over this 25 years ago that said, the first, like in the first like, you didn't even get off the half page of page one, it said you didn't have a perfect childhood. And I couldn't get past page one because I was like, well, this guy's bullshit. I had the perfect I had the best parents. Nothing bad happened to me, you know, and then I started realizing that trauma. And as I started, then I started realizing like that was a moment in time, over many, many, many tiny discoveries over 20 years, I began to become aware that trauma either with a capital T or with a little tea happens to everybody. And just because I didn't have I'm going to call it capital T, big drama, trauma, meaning, No, I did not have alcoholic parents who beat me and abused me, although I can't tell you how many corporate people I've worked with, who are wildly successful, who came out of that kind of story. But, but I didn't, so therefore, I should be okay. And I wasn't. You know, I had things have I shit happen.
Warwick:And it's funny that when you discover just little things that happen that aren't, maybe that don't seem that big a deal. But when you really get into it, and you find out, they are a big deal. I'm speaking to the corporate people you're just talking about, have you ever read a book called The masks of mask the mask of masculinity by Lewis Howes?
Lynn:I actually got that name of that book from one of your videos or podcasts and got it and it's powerful.
Warwick:And so I think, you know, if you guys listening, Lewis house was a I think he was an all American athlete. Maybe played an NFL For a little while, but he watched is actually a show on Netflix, a documentary on Netflix called the masks we wear or something like that. It's cool. And he watched that and all sudden, it clicked with him. Oh my goodness. So anyway, this this book the mask of masculinity. He talks about how because men when they boys are taught not to show emotion, you can't cry, you've got to be tough gotta put on this tough exterior. We all try to figure out how to do that by using various what he calls masks. And, you know, there's nine mask there's the mask of aggression. There's the nodal mask, there's the comic, I mean, the the Joker mask, you know, he talks about Robin Williams. Everybody thought Robin Williams was having a great old time, didn't we? And the Joker mask is whenever serious things come up you just crack a joke to to so you don't have to go there you don't have to, to express your emotions or anything. And he said in that book that it's such a common knowledge that if you want to be a professional comedian, you got there because of that mask that the owner of the Comedy Store in LA where a lot of big con comedians get this start is if you want to work at the Comedy Store, you have to go see a therapist because I know your UFC v depression. Wow. Just the fact that you want to be a comedian because that's how you get to be a comedian and, and so there's that competitive mass there's the alpha male mask. aggression, Joker mask, know it all mask. There's nine different ones. But anyway, what happened athlete, the athlete athlete mask is what happens is we develop these masks to hide from things and some of us become so good at this mask. We become highly successful because of this mask and so now your successful For and miserable, because you have to deal with this mask well, and I in the book, he says a lot of CEOs he met has met CEOs because of this mask. Yeah. And that's why they're driven. You know, this couldn't be it could be the it could be the alpha mask or it could be the the competitive mask got to win. And until you understand where these masks come from, you know, you might be really successful and open. You think you're successful because I've worked really hard and I've really done but then you got to go back a step and realize why have you worked really hard? What are you avoiding? What do you What are you numbing yourself out from? And yes, it's it's an interesting book, but that's, you know, in that, especially for me growing up in a growing up in Australia in my generation, you know, boys don't cry. Boys don't show fear. In my family You don't show grief. Yes. Okay, like we get a you know, someone to die or whatever and you go to a funeral or whatever, oh you died. You know, there wasn't there wasn't grief. So a lot of emotion the basic was a lack of emotions and even thinking about even in my family like if almost like exuberance would be something that was was looked down on too. Like are you being too loud like like yeah you know yeah, there's just no highs and lows it's just just turning around vanilla in the middle sort of thing. And, and what triggered me to to look into all this stuff was a few years ago I was at a horse Expo in Madison, Wisconsin, being horse Expo called the Midwest horse fair. And I met a lady there named Barbara shorty and Barbara shortly was a big time Cutting trainers. She's in the national Tennis Association Hall of Fame. I think she might be in the cowgirl Hall of Fame too. But she she kind of took a different path, probably in the 90s, to where she went to Florida and went to a place called the human potential Institute where they train Olympic coaches and stuff like that. Yeah. But she became more of a mental coach. And I met her there and what I did what happened there was I had to do another one of those talks, you know, so not a demonstration with the horse, but I'm talking about lecture hall. And there was quite a few people, probably 150 people in this in this lecture hall. And so where my booth was in the, in the concourse there. Barbara was in the same hallway. And that's where I first met. I've heard of it for years. That's where I first met her. So anyway, I had to go and do this talk. And when on the way back to my booth, I walk past Barbara's booth, and she said I had to talk to my barbera I'm exhausted I guess because I saw the talk I did was called everything I learned in life I learned from horses, and several horse experts before. And I think each time I've done it, I've kind of opened up a little bit more. And this one opened up quite a bit. And probably let some stuff out to a roomful of 150 stranger that I probably haven't let out before. And I just exhausted, you know. And Barbara said to me, and I told her, I sit down, I just let her stuff she goes, Well, you know, Brene Brown says vulnerabilities, bla bla bla bla bla, and it's the first time I've ever heard of BRene Brown. And after I came home from that process, but I looked up Brene brown brand saw her TED talk on the pair of vulnerability. Yeah, and then I got her books and I've listened to one of her books one day and she said, you cannot selectively suppress emotions. When you suppress the lower emotions automatically suppress the harm I should know. I know. The lower emotions are supposed to be in The said it's all that sort of stuff I didn't that was supposed to be Is that your dog mine?
Lynn:that's, that's yours. Because
Warwick:I never thought about the other end like, hmm, can I experience more joy or more thought of that. And so that led me to ask someone I knew who, my horse person I knew, but she's a therapist. I said, if I was going to work on this work, you know what, against a counselor? What would I do? And she said, Oh, I, I'd go and see a therapist who specializes in DBT dialectical behavior therapy. And so I found a therapist there now from here and so I went and saw her and told her what I wanted to do. And she said, Okay, yeah, we can do that. She said, We also offer group therapy, but you won't need that this would be quite simple. After three months of not getting any where. She said, No, I think you need to do the group. One, two. Then. So then I started going to group therapy once a week for the whole thing was for about a year. In the end, it didn't work at all. Not because DBT doesn't work, but apparently you have to actually have some emotions for that particular form of therapy to work. You have to actually feel you have to have feel, you know, it's for people. So DBT was started for people with well they use it for people to any emotion regulate emotion regulation issues. And I think it was started initially for people who would start a very highly suicidal adult is what I think was initially started for. But anyway, I found it didn't work for me because I didn't have emotions. And so in, you know, a lot of the homework involved. Practicing a skill you're going to need to when you have an emotional break, you know, outburst or emotional crisis during the week and then what you do is you practice that emotional you practice the stuff that you've learned You take the stuff you've practiced, and you use it with that emotional crisis or whatever you have. And so you know, they're really big and you're doing your homework, and I'd come in the next week, like you do your homework, and it did half of it. Well, you only do half of it. Well, I practice the stuff, but I didn't have any emotional crisis. So it didn't have to use it. Right?
Lynn:Because I think that's what our armor does. And like you said, the other side is people who feel too much.
Warwick:It's funny, there was a guy in the group therapy, and he feels too much. Mm hmm. And I said to him, I'm keeping my eye on you. And he said, why is that and I said, because one day in order to get to where I'm going, I don't go from where I am now to where I'm going, I'm going to go from where I am now to you. And then I've got to get through that to get to where I want to go so I'm keeping an eye on you because I want to see what you do to get to where you're going because and I think it's the same with horses. If you ever shut down horse you don't go from a shutdown horse to a perfect horse, you go from a shutdown horse. Why? Keeps it all inside. Mm hmm. The one that has it all on the outside neighbor nature source, then you work through that.
Lynn:Yeah, I think that's right. Because that I think what we're shutting down is that we don't want to have the anxiety. Right. And, you know, my daughter is 13 years clean now, but went through very severe addiction. We almost lost her. And now she actually helps. She actually helps parents navigate their child, their adult child addiction, because she can't she's coming from the standpoint of you're scared to be as strong for your child as you need to be. Because you're afraid you're going to kill them, and what her issue was, was being so sensitive and not having tools to shut down or numb the feelings other than the chemicals. So, anxiety was, you know, which I think of anxiety is fear soup, but just debilitating feelings of picking up on other people on feeling her own emotions and so forth. And so I think you're right, I think We have to learn how because when you become sensitive, which are shut down, might shut down quest is to become more sensitive. But it's what to do with those things then when I do feel them because I don't want to reach for the bottle, I don't want to reach for the drugs like in Brune Brown's power vulnerability talk. She's got that great moment where she talks about how we numb and you see all the different drugs that the first thing that happens when you go to a lot of therapists is you say I'm having anxiety. Well here have some Xanax,
Warwick:and Klonopin or something. Yeah.
Lynn:Yeah. I don't know all the names of them. But you know, there's lots and lots of versions of being medicated. And I personally think we do need to manage our anxiety. I just don't think drugs is the way we manage it. I think we develop our tools to manage
Warwick:Yeah, I think that I think the drugs are covered up, but yes, so Berne Brown, there's something she said in one of those books. That was pretty profound for me. She's talking about numbing behaviors. And she was talking about, you know, things Do to numb. And this is where a lot of these masks come from. I'd be you know, always at work always on social media or you know, numbing behaviors. And she was saying that she remember someone saying who'd been a heroin addict and I'd been sober clean and sober for over 20 years. And they heard that and they said, and apparently they played a lot of video games World of Warcraft or something. And you mean me spending three hours a day playing World of Warcraft is the same as shooting up and she's like, yep, that's all Yes. It's just another it's a legal version of that and have you ever listened to Russell brands recovery?
Lynn:You know, I have heard of it. And actually, it's on my to do list that I should hurry up and do what what? Give us a summary of that.
Warwick:Don't read it get the audible because it's Russel brand worth read. And he talks about the 12 step program, but it's his version of the 12 step program. Okay, so he's, you know, the 12 step program is, you know, Step one is, do you have a problem? Step two is? Do you think you could not have a problem? Step three is are you on your anyway, but then he gives it according to Russell Brand. So he swears a lot. Because he's British. Of course. That's nice. That's it. So this is the 12 steps, according to Russell Brand. Step one, are you a little f up? Step two, do you think you could not be f? Are you on your own going to un F yourself? But one of the things he talks about in there, where was it gone with it? Oh, he Russell Brand was saying that he's lucky because he was a heroin addict. Did you just have a blackout?
Lynn:I did. But I've got a generator. I didn't. As far as
Warwick:he said, There goes,
Lynn:it's coming on.
Warwick:He said I was lucky because I was a heroin addict. And he said, the thing about being a heroin addict, you know you have a problem. And you either fix it or you die. He said that the unlucky people and the people who are addicted to food or technology or porn, or what it workaholics or whatever, you can go through your life with that addiction without even knowing you even have it. And you have this underlying sense of unease that things just aren't right. But it's not bad enough to fix anything he said. So, you know, so it's all depends how you look at it. It's all perspective. But he says he was lucky he was a heroin addict. Because it's quite obvious you have a problem.
Lynn:You know, what I learned? I've done a bit. You know, as part of my journey, I actually learned to teach a self awareness program, taught that for about 10 years with corporate executives and this idea of our addictions, workaholism being the number one corporate addiction, but there's a lot a lot of people are actually addicted to anger. And to that's really hard to believe. Are you still there? Yeah. Okay. For those of you who are listening We're having a blackout and and yet our podcast is continuing. This is awesome. But the some of the addictions I had a lot of people who had food addiction that were very heavy, but what are you going to do about food you got to eat? Like, you know, if you have a technology addiction, try not live it try living in this world without having your phone. Right? If you have food addiction, you definitely have to have food. I would argue that occasionally you actually even need anger, not as much as we use it. But you know, and we're going to have to work for a living, we're not going to go get to sit on a beach and sip myties all the rest of our lives if we want to get over being a workaholic. So there is a thing that's fortunate that your drug is so clearly destroying you and that you can walk away from that drug. But a lot of our addictions have to be in our lives, which I think are harder to break away from.
Warwick:Yeah, and I think I think if you have a I think a lot of times maybe what happens is people have a drug and they get over the drugs. Then I just get another addiction. That's one of the ones that are socially acceptable.
Lynn:Yes,
Warwick:food, technology work.
Lynn:Yes. And actually, I I've actually, you know, this is probably my justification but for example that I told you, I'm a slalom water skier that is maybe one of the most addictive things I've ever done. Surprisingly, it's a sport that people would argue is in decline, and I still am trying to figure out how the most addictive sport I've ever done can be in decline. But it's it's that good endorphin kick that you get that you know that good feeling. But there's a lot of people in this sport who have very addictive personalities like without their waterskiing, you don't want to be around them. Right. And I'm not sure I'm not sure you know, there's a saying that it really can't get rid of old habits that you really need to replace them with new habits. So for example, when I quit smoking, I built model airplanes to do something with my hands.
Warwick:Yep.
Lynn:And maybe we all need some scaffolding. Oh, no. I lost him. Trees and powerlines don't work well together, right? There's a lot of trees. And you were actually here during the World question games when we get to have a current game coming through the night of the reigning finals. Hmm. I was in the building, wondering if I was going to be able to get home or if we were going to have a mudslide that would keep me from being able to get there,
Warwick:ya know, didn't really come into the next morning because we left early the next morning and drove West. And it was pretty heavy rain for three, four hours. We were kind of just ahead of it. Yeah. We could add to that just in time.
Lynn:Six. may Of September, some may before WEG. So five months, three months before a woman you know, not 20 minutes from that site was killed from a mudslide in her house from a big rainstorm. Really? Yeah. And for that entire summer, I actually had to be mindful I would not we own a lake in a camp 10 minutes from my house, but on mountain windy roads and I had to be cautious not to go during rainstorms where we can have mudslides because I thought I would. I wasn't really worried about getting hit directly. I thought the odds of that were pretty low. But I thought the odds of getting stuck were very high. Between down trees and mud coming down so So where were we anyway? I think we were talking about the addictions and is it what what we what is, you know, my acceptable addiction versus not acceptable addictions, but just what we have to do to cope with these feelings, is what addictions are about. Right. So, so I want to I put a bookmark, go ahead. Did you have them?
Warwick:No. I'm listening
Lynn:always I put a bookmark because you mentioned you said you thought we talked about the colleague in New Zealand, it sounds like she does more than just work with horses for the sake of teaching people to ride horses but maybe for applying it to their lives and I was just curious what you would want to say about that.
Warwick:She doesn't necessarily teach people to ride horses at all. She's just she's a horse riding she's equestion mental coach, mindset coach is what she is. Okay. So, you know, she, she has a background in NLP. She was a yogi for years lived in when she was young. She continued in Asia, okay, I lived in an ashram in India for a while. She's a pretty special person, but she you know, she helps a lot of people with with fear based issues around riding the horse. And so she keeps pretty busy doing that, but she also does competition stuff. She actually came to the world of question games with us because she was our a mental coach,
Lynn:Oh, nice question games. That's what so in the world Equestrian Games, like, I mean, you talk about playing on the world stage. Lots of pressure. And I know from having been there. I think they were probably on top of the pressure just as the competition. And we we kind of alluded there's a pressure of there was this weather situation. The whole thing started off with the endurance riding, not being completed due to the heat. And so you had the endurance, they actually ended up canceling that competition. So you people who shipped horses, actually I met the Australian team in the grocery store it Ingles right there. That Ingles that you probably went to too. I met them the night before it started. I was like, Okay, well, I'm going to root for you guys. And I find out the next day this didn't work. We had the hurricane coming in we it wasn't
Warwick:just the heat or the endurance either. They actually had a wrong start. They said They sent people off in two different directions and
Lynn:generally tell people to go the wrong way.
Warwick:Yeah, it was and then they had to restart again. And it was a mess. Like I had someone come back to where we were with the raining. They just been down there. They said, I just saw a news crew get escorted off the place at gunpoint. No, I think I probably heard about that, but forgot that it was pretty. It was pretty crazy and at one point in time, so the shake from maybe it's United Arab Emirates or something. He's really big into the endurance stuff. And he actually, after they canceled the whole thing, I had heard that he said, Okay, let's cancel everything. I will, let's redo this in six months time in Europe, I will pay to have I will pay for the whole thing I'll pay to have every horse transported from every country. I'll pay the airfare of every rider group, support member Pay for the hotels, I'll pay for the everything that we'll just for a minute there, we actually thought that we're going to do that. And then there's gonna be all the events and then the next room that went around. Well, I think the next thing he said he was just for the endurance but yeah, it was. There's so much went on with that thing. You know, we get that everybody gets there and you know, all the facilities aren't completed, you know, it was just a it could have been challenging if you wanted to let that affect you.
Lynn:Well see, that's okay. So but that's what I wanted to touch on, you know, because you just said a very important sentence, which is, it could have been challenging if you let that affect you and I kind of witnessed a variety of people getting affected at different ways. And there's the controllable and the uncontrollable, because what are you gonna do about the weather, they couldn't control the heat, they couldn't control the the hurricane coming in. You would argue that they really over Stretch to think they could be ready in that amount of time because they had 18 months to get ready and they were way not ready 18 months before and, you know my progress but not anywhere near I think what they would have liked to in time for the event. So you show up and you're like, we're in a construction site. I thought this was the world Equestrian Games.
Warwick:It was funny when we first got there, the day we got there. We had to get a passes and we had to drive up to the top of the hill to this big office update and get on passes and everything. We drove up and dirt road. Were up there for an hour or so. And we came back it was a paved road.
Lynn:Yeah, that's how fast things were happening. Completely the busing area where people like me came, you know, to watch that they completely like change the whole like flow of it and everything overnight. And yeah, we'll go
Warwick:out at nighttime and come back the next day and the parking lot would be paved. Yeah, things like that. Whether it be a new building that wasn't there the day before was crazy.
Lynn:Yeah. And that that big arena, where they had the press box in the middle I know that literally the night before the game started, they were still doing construction on that. And this really close friend and colleague of mine was responsible for moving everybody in. And I think they finished it at like 10 o'clock that night and move the press people in hours before the whole thing started. So, but what I what I'm curious about is how did you respond to just, you know, not the pressure just to the competition, but the pressures of, you know, both natural and unnatural uncertainty?
Warwick:Well, Jane Park had a lot to do with it. So we asked her to help us with the mental preparation for it early on in the year once we're qualified. So Jane, we know Jane, she's a friend of ours, but we we contacted her about helping us out. And so I hadn't been competing much for the previous four years. Okay, I was I hadn't been training horses for four years outside horses. Okay. Competing much right? In back when I was competing, I wasn't one of the big guys or anything. And we, you know, we were lucky Robin, my wife Robin and I were both lucky enough to get on the team. I think there's probably Australian reiners who are more qualified to me at least Robin's been competing a lot, very successfully last few years. But you know, qualifying for the World equestrian games, which is a campaign it takes a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of you gotta have the right horse, all that sort of stuff. And so we're just like in we're in a position to be able to do that. So we're quite thankful to be to make the team but I hadn't been competing much for the last four years. So I, I need all the help I can get. And so we we asked Jane to be a mental coach. And one of the things Jane did with us early on was we did like a Skype interview like this was a zoom in Yeah. Zoom was in her in and she asked us some questions and then she made us up an Audio to listen to an mp3 and I was about 35 minutes long and she said you got to listen to it with stereo headphones. So you need two headphones like this and start listening to it. It's Jane and she's talking in both ears, yak yak, she's talking for about 10 minutes and then about 10 minutes in, it splits off and there's one Jane in this ear. And there's a different a different Jane in this ear, ah, at the same time, and we were supposed to listen to this quite a bit, which I did. And there was some other mental exercise she had us do. But we it's an Jane came to the world equestrian games with us. And you know, we get there, it's hot, it's things some things aren't completed, blah, blah, blah. There's a lot of stuff going on. And on the way out, they said Jane, Jane drove out with our horses. So it's four days drive from here. So a friend of mine from California drove the truck Jane was with him. So she's from New Zealand and another friend of ours in Australia went to Rachel so the three For this big road trip across the country, and a Jane being from New Zealand went into a truck stop somewhere and wanted to buy some water when she said she was in whatever part of the country's interested water and then what is it? they said Water? What what? Water? couldn't understand it so she was practicing water practicing water all the way
Lynn:across. That's why we say it in the south, water.
Warwick:And so when we got there, Jane said we need to have a safe word. Okay, if any conversation start hitting negative the first person who recognizes it's going negative just say water. And so, you know, like the first day we get in Ron Peck and like, right, yeah, it's hot water. Oh, yeah. Where's the world Equestrian games, or things aren't, you know, not everything's finished, water. Oh, and so you She just kept us from going into into negativity. Yeah, the whole time. And after a while, didn't have to say no one had to say water we just we didn't go down that negative path but that was a little part of it. But when it came when we first got there our you know, what the what is called the shift equip, which is that basically your, your team discipline coach. So if the language of the FEI is French so FEI is Federation equestrian International, right, your national question Federation. And so what are the terms in French so your, your, your coach for your discipline for the team is called your shift quickly, just calling the shift, but he doesn't cook eggs in the morning. Right. And our chefs named Rodney I've known him since he was about 15. And Rodney said so what do you think you and Robin can score on these on these two horses right and Rodney lives in Australia and the two other team members are brother and sister and actually the the brother is the one we bought Sherlock the horse that changed my life from. And they're very, very good world class. And so Rodney is got a fair idea of what they can score is wanting what Robin and I can score because the first round of competition is the team medals. Mm hmm. And your team medals is basically your, your top three scores or your four scores, your top three scores are added up, and that's your, that's the team. That's where the team medals are awarded. And what they do then is the top 15 from the team medals go straight to the individual finals, then they take from 16 to 35. They take the next 20 and they go in a semifinal round and the top five of those goes to the individual files. Okay, so you never 20 individual finales. But what Rodney is trying to figure out when he asked us the question, it's trying to figure out based on previous year's World equestrian games, you think we know we think it could we score enough to be in the middle. Now he's pretty sure that the other two Martin and Shawn are Gonna have big scores. He's just wondering what Robin I think we can do and we both said, you know, probably a 217 and a half if everything goes right if we were good ourselves, right get your horses prepared, right? And horses are good that day and we know little mistakes happen. We can be probably a 217 and a half each. Like Okay, so we go in and compete the first round I'm a to 17 Robins to 18
Lynn:so your average was exactly right.
Warwick:Yeah. And it was a amazing experience because I was not nervous. I was in the I was in the zone. I was not nervous. Everything was clear, time slowed down. I was like, and it was it was a state I'd never really been in before competing anywhere, anytime. And this is the world equestrian games. My ass cheeks are supposed to be clamped so tight shot. It's not funny. And you know, one of the so Jane gave us a yoga breathing technique to do. And I had to use it a couple of times the day before we competed and probably a few times a day we competed, but it's an alternate nostril breathing technique. You've heard of that?
Lynn:Yes, I have
Warwick:alternate nostril breathing technique and I don't know if they alternate nostril things does or the technique is just so complicated. You have to be present while you're doing it. So whatever you're worrying about goes away while you do it. I did it a few times, the day before I did it a few times the day off, I did it in the, you know, you know, half an hour before I compete, I'm riding around and I just did it while I was on hold Anyway, it was it was amazing that I've never felt that in the zone before. Something was completely different. I wasn't sure what it was. And so we actually made the semi funds which we didn't ever thought we do. You know, we were there to go and put a good showing for for our country or whatever. But we weren't expected to do anything. So we make the semi finals which is this is amazing. So I made it in last year. Like I was 35th Robin was about 33rd or something like that. So we go in and we go in for the semifinals, I am a to 220 and Robin to 220 and a half
Lynn:Holy moly, those are huge scores. And so,
Warwick:you know, we both have a personal best
Lynn:Wow.
Warwick:At the world of question games and for both of us the experience was just surreal is like I was just so in the zone in like I said, you know, everything's clear time slows down. You're not nervous. I was just, it was just the weirdest sensation and then we and so our Robin was leading it for a while and our second and then she went I went down and when the last horse when she was fifth and I was six, so she's gonna make the individual finales and then the last horse beat her so she's 16 I'm seven. So once Whatever the individual finds that afterwards reflecting, I'm like, ah, I don't know what the hell happened. But I've never felt like that before. And then I started thinking about something was different was different. And then I realized, oh, my goodness, I know what was different. That voice in the back your head, that voice that says, You suck, who do you think are? This is not going to work? What do you think you're doing here? Do you think you are trying to do this sort of thing wasn't there? And what I realized was, I've never known it's been there, but it's always been there. But it wasn't until it wasn't there. That became obvious that it was there. Then I've always, I've always competed and known what I could do. So on a conscious level, I know what I can get done here. But what I realize now on the subconscious level in the background has been this. What Jane calls the itty bitty shitty committee.
Lynn:That's a good name. the itty bitty shitty committee.
Warwick:Yeah, that nagging voice a lot. So I have Not ever realized it was there until it wasn't there. So it turns out that that audio thing that Jane had us do that was listed in both ears. It's a hypnosis tape. And the you can only listen to one voice at a time and that one voice you're listening to is going into your conscious thoughts. But the other ones going into your subconscious and that so that audio thing is actually what?Silenced that itty bitty shittie Committee.
Lynn:did. I was wondering, and so I'm going to get a little bit nerdy here. But could you when you were listening to the voices in there, she's giving you one in each ear? Could you choose which one to listen to? Or router or
Warwick:is she saying the same thing, roughly the same thing in both ears? It's the same sort of stuff. Okay? That's not like, this one's talking about something and this one's done at something else. It's just the same sort of thing in a different way. Okay, is you concentrate on that one, But apparently the other one goes in your subconscious. But it was. It was pretty amazing. So
Lynn:that's very cool. I'm making lots of notes on that
Warwick:on the same note, you know, when I was doing I said, I did that year therapy that didn't really work. It didn't work for the emotion thing, but it worked for a lot of other things. I said we had to do a lot of homework. And one of the homeworks we had to do one week was they said, This week, you're going to count judgmental thoughts. And so what you should do is get like a clicker, like the bounces, you know, the night clubs,
Lynn:or one of those little clickers, yeah,
Warwick:or whatever, maybe put some pebbles in one pocket. And when you have a judgmental thought pebbles on the other side, you know, and keep track of how many judgmental thoughts you have. And so I thought, well, I'll do the table thing because I only have about three judgmental thoughts a day. So I'll get three pebbles and stick them in this pocket. And now as I have them, I'll transfer them over the other side at 21 before breakfast the first day
Lynn:and that's just the ones you caught, right.
Warwick:That's the ones that caught it. So what I really learned from that was when you start becoming aware of your judgmental thoughts, number one, you become aware of how many you have. But number two, and I think this is hugely important. Number two is you become aware of how many of you have about yourself,
Lynn:the itty bitty should have committee
Warwick:Yes, that you don't know you have. And that's when you can do like, you know, we talked about Bernie brown before and she talks about the difference between guilt and shame. No shame is a focus on self guilt is a focus on behavior. And so, yeah, you know, a lot of times people do something that they think themselves aren't so stupid. And so you're telling yourself You are stupid. Whereas if you you know, when you count those judgmental thoughts, and you become aware of your judgement, thoughts, and you'll be aware of when you haven't met yourself when you say, I'm so stupid, or no, I'm not stupid. I just did something that we could call stupid, but I'm not stupid and next time that happens I could try it differently. Next time, I won't do something stupid. So you get to reframe that. But I don't think you can reframe that if you don't know what's happening. And so I think Janes audio thing had a lot to do with it. But I think doing that quite a bit, had to do with it too. But that whole the whole judgemental thought thing. Once you know first you've got to be able to realize you're having them, then you've got to be identify the ones about yourself, and then you can then reframing those, I think it's the key, the absolute key to a lot of stuff. But But then, once you as far as the horses go, when when you start being aware of your judgmental thoughts and reframing them, then you can start catching yourself having judgmental thoughts about your horse when your horse does something instead of thinking, Oh, you're being an idiot, whatever. You think there's a there's a big there's a reason for that behavior. there's a there's a feeling behind that behavior. Yeah. And so you can start to look at things differently. Big fan of the Wayne Dyer quote when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. And I think that's a big that's a big one is when you can catch yourself with judgmental thoughts and reframe them. It changes. It's like quantum physics of quantum mechanics, it changes what you're looking at, you know, the observer has a direct influence over the thing you're observing and what you think about when you're observing, I think has an influence over to and especially with horses because they can read your energy so well.
Lynn:And how, how is it because you we talked, we alluded to this earlier about how horses can read your mind and I was on a mule this weekend where I tested this, I've tested it several times. But in this particular case, there's a riding stables nearby and I go over and ride regularly there just to really work on my seat in my saddle. It's fairly safe. This particular mule they normally have the guides ride because she will go off road She, you know, has very much has a mind of her own. And so she's like, my advanced training. But I was playing with her on doing different paths than what the people in we were on the last we were, the last in the row, what they were doing. So if they went to the right of the tree, I went to the left of the tree or if they went, you know, I just did a lot of things where we were not doing what everybody else was doing. And I experimented with just using my thought to send her a place, nothing to the best of my ability, nothing else. And she didn't do it 100% of the time, but she did it often enough for me to go this damn mule is really reading my mind. So how does that do you have an idea of how that's working? Am I sending subconscious signals? Am I just letting my scientific brain get in the way and we should all be recognizing that this is just the way the world works? What's your take on that?
Warwick:Oh, I really think they can read your mind. You know, have you ever heard of Temple Grandin.
Lynn:Yes.
Warwick:So in Temple Grandin, his book, animals in translation, she talks and she's changed what she says now, but back when she wrote that book, she said that all autistic people don't think in words they think in pictures. Okay? She's kind of retracted that and said some do think words, but she doesn't think in words at all, she only thinks in pictures. And she says the animals only think in pictures, of course, but I'm thinking words do that they don't have words. And she says that they basically can read your mind. And if you've got all that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah going on in your head. It's like white noise. It's like, shhhhhhhh
Lynn:I actually call that I will use this with my clients a lot the language signal versus noise, because we all have a lot of noise in our head. You know, what's the boss gonna think? And how do I make this negotiation work and what do I do about this person that seems to be standing my back and I want a piece shit of Because I did this to that person, you know, all the judgmental, and that's just the beginning. That's just the first second of it.
Warwick:Yeah. So in there, she says, if you've ever noticed, if you've seen like a horse that's dangerous, or animals don't like a bull that's dangerous or whatever. If you've been around animals long enough, you would have seen some way where there's a dangerous animal and someone's toddler wanders in there with them, you think, oh, my goodness, and the dangerous bull goes over and sniffs them or doesn't even go anywhere near them. Whereas if an adult went in there, that'd be a problem. And she said, it's because you know, pre verbal children don't have all that stuff going on in their head. So their mind is very, very present. And she said the same thing with a lot of autistic people. You'll see an autistic person will walk into something like that, and you thin think omg their going to die and and nothing happens because if they just think in pictures, and all they see in front of you know, the mental picture that is in their head is what In front of them not all these fear and all sorts of stuff like that, if you think about when that kid walked, climbed into the or got into the, the gorilla cage
Lynn:gorilla pen Yeah.
Warwick:What did the gorilla do? Pick it up like, Hey, can I guarantee you if an adult went in there and then mine was doing all that bbuuuu the gorilla would have tore him me to. But the good, the gorilla just picked it up the kids not you know, the kids mind is right there. So I think pre verbal children and certain autistic people, you know, or people who can just really, really, really be present I think that's the ultimate state of being able to get along with not just horses, but animals and people but especially with horses though.
Lynn:Because thinking in pictures is a form of being present, right?
Warwick:Yeah. So
Lynn:man that just sends my thoughts into so many different questions. What to do with it. That I, I actually also tested it though, you know, because I'm sure there gonna be people listening that are so I'm going to be somewhat skeptical. But I there's a book I've read a few years ago or like two or three years ago called zen, Zen horse or Zen mind or something like that,
Warwick:which is in Hamilton wrote it.
Lynn:there's an exercise that said, test, test that this way, go sit next to a, you know, a field with at least three horses. Wait till they all put their heads back down grazing once they've gotten used to you, and then decide which one you're going to go catch, get a picture in your head and then see what happens. So one of my friends happen to have three horses in the paddock where I was going to go pick one out the rone was the one I was going to pick out. And the other ones were, you know, all three of them were there. They were started grazing, this didn't take long. And then I said okay, now I'm going to go get Scotty and I'm telling you the minute I thought it Scottie's head came up and looked at me. And I'm at least 200 feet away.
Warwick:So did you catch him?
Lynn:i? No problem
Warwick:then so it can work the other way too. Yes. I'm gonna catch that horse and that always goes I don't want to get caught. And you know if you think about when you have that mental picture, I'm going to catch that horse you're not present because that's not happening at the moment. So sometimes you can get that to work and sometimes it works against you and it's this is kind of like when I was talking about with the Mustang and I said when people walk down the side of a horse, sometimes the mental picture is what they're gonna do when they get there and horse gets ahead of you. Yeah, you know sometimes it works for you. Sometimes it works against you but
Lynn:that happened last week in a much bigger paddock when the horse the horse I normally would go catch walked right up to me because he totally knew I wasn't coming to him. I could have totally caught him that day. He the Arabian that I was just starting to work with kind of walked over to check me out and the minute I said I'm catching you took off to the other end. And that was my work for the day was bringing myself to enough presence so that I could get near him. Because, frankly, how if you don't, if you're out in a big giant pasture, you're not gonna catch a horse that doesn't want to be caught.
Warwick:Right, And so if you think about, think about the fact horses can read your mind, and you think that what I said about the zebras before with, like, if this ever notice is something and he's energy changes that energy goes through the whole herd. So not only can they read your mind, they can read your energy. Mm hmm. Okay. And your emotions. And so what I've been on about for quite a while now, a couple years now doing clinics and stuff is making people really aware that that is a thing. Because what you do physically is probably not nearly as important as what your mental pictures of what your self talk is, and what your energy is. intention is sounds like bears wrestling outside
Lynn:I can hear. well that that that word energy which we use tangibly around electricity. You know, the company that I buy my
Warwick:the woo Is real. So there's a book I've read called. electricity from is called Duke Energy. And yet you start talking to people about energy and a lot of times, they know when they get a vibe, but a lot of times they're like, Yeah, but that's that seems to woo so we're not going there. And sometimes I think the woo is the only thing that's real It's by Rupert Sheldrake called the the sense of being stared at. And the whole book is about that, and he talks to it gives an experiment he said, next time you're in a two storey building, look out the window and see if you can see someone sitting out there and just stare at him. See how long it takes him to glance up at you. It'll happen.
Lynn:That's amazing.
Warwick:But in there he talks about how he's interviewed like six spies. Okay? spies, all of them will say say if you're following someone through a crowded city or whatever, the thing you cannot do is look at them or think about following them. Because if they're if their senses are on high alert, like if you don't if you're not, if you're not expecting to be followed by this by a spy, it's probably not gonna you're not going to notice it. But you're not telling you that if you another spy, your sensors on me ever seen that movie was a calling. It's called spy game with Brad Pitt and you're sitting at restaurant Robert Redford says to Brad Pitt, so what's the license plate of the third car from the corner? What sort of watches the waitress wearing? What's the guy in the right hand corner? What's on his hat?
Lynn:That's a great thing you need to get
Warwick:you Need to notice all that stuff? Because you will need that information at some point in time. But yeah, he says so. If you are, if you're a spy and you're following someone else I think you've got to do is not look at them directly. Not think about it. He talks to like fishermen and a lot of fishermen say the thing you cannot do is go out and think about the fish you're the catch. Because the day you're thinking about catching the fish, the fish don't show up. When you think about I'm gonna go out here and I'm gonna throw this in here and I'm gonna sit here and just look at the trees and that's the day you catch the fish. Hmm. I went to went to watch a clinic last year with a guy named Joe Walter. So Joe Walter was around Ray hunt a lot. Yep, in Tom guns, too. I think of the movement
Lynn:of people who aren't horse people, we should say Ray Hunt and Tom Dorrance are both legendary people that they would kind of call horse whisperers, but
Warwick:they like the Buddha of and so in the morning, they already Get some stuff. And then in the afternoon, he got some cattle in the end of the arena, the 15, head of cattle. And he said, Can I borrow your horse for a second? So he got on someone's horse. And he said, what I want you to do is ride into the herd through the herd of cattle out the other side, set them on one end of the arena, ride to the back of them, and then cut one out, okay, now it's not a cutting competition. It's not about trying to keep them out. What I want you to do is get in there and get one out without scattering the cows everywhere. Huh, he did that he walked in real slow walk through the cows and they kind of parted a bit while they walked through but they didn't run any where. And then he got one out and they all stayed together as a herd. Everybody has tried it, no one could do it. Soon as I started hitting new there's cows all over the place and they walk in the same speed he was walking yet. And for a minute they I couldn't figure out what was going on because no one could do it like he did it. One of them is riding the same horse. And he said you want to know the secret. The Secret and this will blow your mind. The secret is do not stare at the When I walked in there, I had a soft focus. I was aware of the cows I was aware of the horse underneath me, I was aware of the arena footing I was aware of where my horses feet where the where the hills, I was aware of the birds as soon as the clouds. I walked through there, I turned around, I came back into the herd. And then the cow that I wanted to come out, I looked directly at it. And when I looked at it, it went that way and the others went that way, and I got it out. That's just the change in your focus. If you're staring at the caws as you're going in, it's basically like, you know, the sense of being stared at.
Lynn:Wow. Well, and it's interesting because the place I immediately went because in waterskiing, one of the first things that they teach you how to do and it's very hard to learn not to do is you're going around a buoy and you're doing it at high speed on a ski that can hit the buoy and it doesn't feel good when you hit it. It's a bad crash. So you've got to not stare at the buoy and somehow clear the buoy. But if you If you think or focus on the buoy, you're screwed, you're gonna hit it, you're gonna hit it.
Warwick:And like defensive driving, you get into a skid they say good look where you want to go not at what you don't want to hit.
Lynn:Exactly. And in the snow skiing parlance, when I learned that if I would ski to the whitespace, instead of focusing on the tree, because I learned how to ski to the tree real well, when I focused on it. Same thing with what I do whitewater rafting a fair bit. And it's like, if you want to pick your path, you better pick your path and not your obstacle. Because if you focus on the obstacle, you're going right to it.
Warwick:So after the world equestrian games, Jane pike did a cultivating confidence clinic in her house. And she said something during that clinic that was profound. She said, This is what you're talking about. She said, you cannot move away from something you can only move towards something and we will look at it like, Did you just say she said you cannot move away from something, you can only move towards something. She said, right now, once you guys will do something for me. I'll have you do it. I want you right now to not picture a big blue tree. So don't picture up blue train while you're not picking up blue tree, I want you to not pick just some green grass at the bottom of the Big Blue tree that you're not picturing. And while you're doing that, maybe not picture a big yellow bird at the top of the Big Blue tree that you're not picturing with the green grass that you're not picturing. And what are you picturing.
Lynn:You have to picture all on it and not picture it.
Warwick:You know, you are picturing a big blue tree. She said, Now, I want you to think about holding a basketball. Okay? And you get to choose Is it a brand new basketball so it's bright, orange pumped up really hard and it's got the pimples all over it, or it's an old worn out basketball so it's a little bit soft, it's brown, it's scuffed, and it's smooth. Whichever one of those you can pick, pick whichever one you want. Wheres your big blue tree goin. the Big Blue tree disappeared when you thought about the orange basketball. So she said you know, so that the Big Blue tree is trying to move away from something. You can't move away from something you can't not think about something and this is what you're talking about. can't think about what you don't want to hit. You can't think I don't want to hit that because you will hit it. You have to think, where do I want to go instead of where do I not want to go? So it's just about thinking positively versus negatively. You're gonna think about something and if and the way I think when summers wide, if you're not thinking about something positive, you're thinking about something negative, there is no middle ground. And after the year of my therapy stuff some way during that year when I went to my wife and I went to a place in Tucson, Arizona called Miravalle. Yeah, mindfulness resorts sort of a thing went away for a week and they might it was for anniversary or something. And one of the yoga classes we did there, the yoga instructor said something and it's stuck with me, but she said, may you be happy? Hmm. And so all of 2018 I Why didn't travel I didn't do any clinics. You know, that's the year we qualified to autograph signings in the world question and answer at the end of the year, I went back to traveling again. So I mean, airports a lot. When I'm in airports, I people watch you people watch.
Lynn:Oh, yes, I actually, I have some I have some airplane stories. I you know, I did a TED talk and I talked about a pretty bad scene that I almost caused in an airport because I didn't travel very well.
Warwick:So I people watch, okay. I didn't realize was because I've never been aware of my thoughts that much. When I people watch. I'm not thinking The best thing about those people. I'm thinking the worst thing about those people like, Did you not look in the mirror before you left your house this morning? Do you have a brush? Yeah, got too many clothes on not enough clothes. I wouldn't wear those shoes, but that handbag, whatever,
Lynn:you know, butt cheeks are hanging out. We
Warwick:started traveling again. And I had been aware of counting judgmental thoughts being aware of and reframing that sort of stuff. I noticed I walked into the airport and I was thinking negatively about everybody. So then I just went okay, I don't know. I'm gonna look him in the eye immediately. Maybe happy. And so I walked along and every person that walked past me, I look them in the eye and think to myself, maybe happy. Now if they looked, most people won't look you in the eye. But if they did look you in the eye, and they saw you look at them, a lot of people will look back at the ground or whatever. But some people, when they look you in the eye, and you give them a bit of a eye smile, they give you a bit of a eye smile. It's kind of nice. Yeah, this exchange of energy is pretty cool. But what I noticed was when I got to the other end of the airport, this was just like the world equestrians games and get to the end of the airport. I had this light eerie feeling inside me that I've never felt in an airport before and it was totally opposite to the dough. Heavy, dark feeling of always had inside me when I've worked on the airport the other day, and that was my normal I didn't even know that was there. And so instead of thinking big blue tree thought I was thinking orange basketball thoughts. And it was profound The difference in how I felt at the other end of the airport from what I normally feel and not that normal. My normal like when you're shut down, you don't know you shut down because that's normal. And so I realized that I have to think orange basketball thoughts walking through the airport. If I'm not conscious of thinking orange basketball thoughts, if I'm not conscious of thinking maybe happy I revert to big blue tree thoughts. Well, I'll revert to the judging thoughts. So I have to be present enough to do the maybe heavy because there's no middle ground. I'm not walking along and you walk past me. And it's not I don't have a thought about you. If I don't consciously think maybe happy, I will subconsciously judge something. Yes. And then judge and then judge and then judge and then judge and then judge and then judge without even know I'm doing it. And so yeah, just that whole, maybe happy thing is my orange basketball thing. But
Lynn:that transformative because yeah, you know, I've I've often thought about that myself. Because I've had this very struggle and like I said, talk about it a very similar experience in my TED Talk, where I almost went off on a young woman with her child in the TSA line, because she was in the expert traveler line. And of course, my thoughts were What the hell are you doing in the expert traveler line? I'm an expert and you're a mother Get out of here. Yeah, we're kind of ugly. But what I've come to think of is that kind of judgmental thoughts. And I do them still all the time. I have to catch myself constantly. But it's like me swallowing the poison pill and hoping you feel something bad Yeah, I'm the one who just poisoned myself with my judgment of you. And you're not in on it at all. And somehow, I feel like sometimes my judgmental thoughts like in the case of the mother in the airport, frankly, I just wanted, I want her just to be out of my way. So I was trying to change something about her that was truly unchangeable. And what a waste of energy.
Warwick:That's the secret isn't it? So my I don't have trouble with other passengers in the airports. You know, I have trouble with The TSA. Yeah. Because I'm a rule follower. I want to get it right. And it differs from airport to airport. Now it's all about safety that all the security measures are about safety as in terrorism so we don't want to bomb or whatever. Right okay. Well, a bomb in one airport will be a bombing and other airport when it so obviously all the rules should be the same if you're going to prevent this plane from falling into the sky and it used to annoy the hell out of me in the airport. You can have one guy tell you one thing and the next guy tells you something different and I would go off at him, and see the supervisor and I want the supervisor to come over and say you need to have a talk to these two guys because this guy told me something different than this guy told me. If you hear about safety, you guys need to be on the same page.
Lynn:Oh my God
Warwick:used to annoy the hell out of me and talk to my therapist about it. She was saying said Do you have like control issues? Like you have authority issues? I said, No, I don't have authority issues. I'm trying to follow the rules. I'm just like, I don't want the rules. Tell me the rules. And I'll follow them.
Lynn:Yes. But don't change the rules. Like don't give me inconsistent rules, because then
Warwick:it's funny. You know, in Australia, if you fly domestically, you can go through security with a bottle of water. Yeah, you can't get on the plane with a hot cup of coffee. In America, you can't go through security with a bottle of water but you can get on a plane with a hot cup of coffee and that used to annoy the hell out of me because I believe the laws of gravity are the same in both countries. Oh, and if a bottle of water can bring a plane down in America, why can't I bring it down in Australia? Or if a hot cup of coffee can bring it find it in Australia? What kind of bring it down American that sort of stuff. You should just annoy the hell out
Lynn:i love it. And but I'm assuming that now that you've got the May you be happy. Can you do that? Going through TSA now. Are you a little
Warwick:Of course. Nobody is He's I have no expectation, I now have no expectation of the rules being the same. Yeah. So just tell me what your rule is. And I'll follow it. Okay. Hi, what's your rule? I'll follow it to its I was having expectations of, of the TSA, people all being the same? Well, following the same rules, I don't want to be in trouble. So, you know, I think that part of my childhood is, you know, was quite structured and strict and you're doing your best to not be in trouble. And so, I think that's, yeah, I think that's where that comes from. And for the most part, the rules of society are consistent. So I'm good with it. But when they're not consistent is when I get all bent out of shape, but, but what I realized was I was just like you said, I was controlling something. It's uncontrollable. I realized now, TSA has no idea what they're doing. I think they're in ept. Okay, but I no longer get mad about him being inept
Lynn:Right and you're accepting the risk that they're inept. ineptness might let something slip through.
Warwick:I'm not that's not what I'm even gonna. I'm not why you would use that as my as my excuse to yell at them. The big thing was, I don't want to be wrong. That's not something about being right.
Lynn:You just don't want to be wrong.
Warwick:It's not I have to be right. I don't want to be in trouble. I don't want to be reprimanded. I don't want you to say you did it wrong. Not because I have to be right. It's not It's not about being right. It's about I don't I don't want to be told I did it. Wrong. Not so much. I don't be spoken to sternly maybe all or something about I have to be right. I just want to know, how do I get you to not tell me that I did something bad. It's not so much about the wrong it's the bad. put it that way. That's for me. It's not It's not like I gotta be right. I just I just don't want you to tell me that. It's on bed.
Lynn:I think I like to be right. But I also had that discovery with one of my first coaching experiences when I was working at the big bank. And I was using this kind of language like, I don't, I'm getting scolded. They were trying to give me feedback. But I call that getting scolded. I, I, people were not agreeing with me on something. And I call that being punished. And I use words like not wanting to get in trouble. And I finally had a coach that had the wherewithal to say, you realize you're talking like you're a little kid? Have you not noticed that you're the boss and You're a grown ass woman and you're sitting here acting like you're a little girl. So how about like, putting on your big girl pants and actually showing up as a leader, instead of somebody who's afraid of getting in trouble? Because what kind of leader is that? And that was a profound experience for me to realize that even in my language, which is a little bit like your blue tree versus your orange basketball. My language was sending me into the wrong focus.
Warwick:Yep. If you're not, and the thing is, I think if you're not aware of the fact that you're doing it, you can't, you can't reframe that.
Lynn:And something has to hold that mirror up. You know, somebody and the the thing I've loved about working with horses in the last couple of years is the fact that they do operate as beautiful mirrors of what we're really doing. In a way they're kind of like truth tellers. Because I'm, I can at least like to believe I can bullshit people but I know I can't bullshit the horse like privilege normal times. So it's been pretty profound for me to see if they can help me with my own awareness. So, well, I'm recognizing we've been at this for a while, and I appreciate for all those listeners that have stayed with us this long because I'm going to make sure in the introduction, I let people know the good stuff happens all the way through. This is a conversation that we're We really have covered a lot of territory. I have I do like to ask sort of a question at the end of my podcasts of all my guests, at least when I remember and it's, it's this one. Which because we talk a lot, I mean, if there's anything of what I do, it's sort of balance and learning and growth. And lots of these conversations are about that. And I'm curious for you, Warwick, what is what is your growth edge? You've been on a growth journey and you talk a lot about it. We've I think we've barely scratched the surface of your growth journey, but what is your growing edge at the moment? What are you most working on where you're like, sort of, still not sure of it because it's so new for you?
Warwick:Probably solving trauma, like I've only just recently become aware of it's almost like a I've been given all the answers recently as to where it came from. Now I know where it came from, because like we talked about earlier, there was no big incident that happened, like, oh, and how to get this happened or whatever. And so now it's like trying to figure out how to unravel that. Because you know how to how to basically how to get out of that. I now know why I now I now know why when to shut down. Have you ever read Waking the tiger by?
Lynn:No, I was literally on trying to find the reference for that. Peter Levine. I was about to tell you. You need to read Peter Levine if you haven't
Warwick:no. So
Lynn:a lot of the work I do is with people around this very thing and that's one of the first books I recommend.
Warwick:And that book. You know, before I read that book, I was like I had the perfect childhood. But then he talks about he talks about childhood hospitalizations and surgeries. and stuff like that. And so I knew that I had pneumonia quite a bit when I was little like little little before about five. But I didn't, didn't remember that much about it. So then recently I was on a podcast with a young lady and she's a trauma therapist. And she looks at things through a through a trauma lens, both with people and with horses, too. And we were talking about this stuff. And so when we get off the podcast, I told her that I'd been you know, and had pneumonia as a kid and so she said, ask your mother. When, when you want How old were you when you had pneumonia? And were you hospitalized? Okay, you know, were you separated from your parents? When you were younger, I'm like, maybe it was maybe wasn't so I was talking to mom the other day and I said that was the first time I had pneumonia. She said the first time hitting the moon, what was bronchitis and tournament. You had bronchitis a lot, but you had pneumonia four times. But I said, When was the first time I had it? She said, Oh, you're about three months old. And I said, I was in hospital. Yes. I spent a week in hospital. Oh, oh, my. I'm like, okay, so when was this? When was the next time I hadn't managed because you were living to hold on? I said. I spent a week in hospital then. And so I'm like, Oh, thank you. This is very, very, very early on.
Lynn:Yeah, pre memory.
Warwick:Pre memory and I think you're talking about intuition stuff before I think that I was quite possibly born what do you call them? empath. Okay, I think I had a lot of that. So then I have those experiences that shut it down and then all the way growing up, you can't have those memories. sort of thing so it really got locked up and so unlocking unlocking that I think he's gonna be that's that's yeah that's where I'm up to now is
Lynn:Carolyn Mays Have you heard of Carolyn mayes Are you familiar with? She has a recorded series called energy anatomy m y SS?
Warwick:No wonder I couldn't figure it out
Lynn:yeah you remember to go. But Carolyn myss did she did a book I think the book is called the anatomy of the spirit and the recorded version which is what I highly recommend changed my life is called energy anatomy. She was she is a medical intuitive understands obviously energy at a very deep level and I listen to this on cassette tapes in my car in like five minutes anatomy and energy anatomy. And she tells us story. The picture that came up for me, as you were talking about that was, she tells a story of somebody being like, wound up with rubber bands, like just just imagine somebody that just put enough rubber bands on it, they're just, and then like one by one, we have to go cut those rubber bands to free ourselves. And she understands it at a level that she actually had a physician work with her to help her find help him find where the bonus was coming from. Because we, a lot of times are our business gonna sound weird to people who've never studied it, but I promise you if you dig in, you'll find out this is real. You your energy and your patterns, your childhood problems, will enter into your physique. So probably 80 90% of our illnesses are because of our thought patterns caused by our illness and another Have you heard of Louise Hay? Yes. So Louise has worked with healing, I found to be really profound because she talks a lot about the thoughts that you want to have versus the thoughts you have.
Warwick:Right? What's that? What's that body of work that she does called? It's
Lynn:healing your life. And
Warwick:someone else mentioned that, to me is about so what I found is when when one name keeps popping up,
Lynn:yeah, it's well, and it came to me as we were talking, that's kind of how I work. Because I don't I have to work intuitively myself. This is part of my training to open my intuition. But when I was given that book, and it was late 90s so Louis, I'm now 61. She was probably about my age. At that time, maybe 60, early 60s. She was bragging on having cured herself of cancer through her thoughts. Now my very rigid armored corporate left brain was screaming bullshit from the first sentence of that book. I read it anyway because that was accountability to my coach to read it and I was like, okay, okay, okay, but this is not what I was taught. My parents didn't teach me this. I don't remember learning this in school. This looks like a bunch of crap. It's not real. Yeah, it can't be real. And I had to go through a lot of noise. I went as far as to take her chart and map the, I'm a pretty healthy person. So it's hard to find things that were wrong with me. But I could find a few things that were like, healthy health issues that I should look at. And I went and found the health issue. And then I could map it back to my thoughts. And I have the book, I still have his full stickies where I mark those things. And I started kind of buying into this. I was like, okay, maybe 90%. As the years went by, and I started, like something would happen, and I would go look at her book, and I go, Oh, yeah, maybe I am having that thought pattern and it's showing up in this way. I got more and more aware. But in the meantime, I was watching her because, you know, she cured herself of cancer. But if you cure yourself with cancer and you die when you're 65, I would argue that maybe you didn't. But I think she lived to be close to 90 she has passed now. But I if you get past 80 or 85, I'm going to give you that you've carried yourself. Yeah. Because I kind of argue that we all like my target number. I hope to go way past it. But I'm going to live like I'm 25 until I'm 80. And then we'll look at it now, can you No, no, who knows? I could go tomorrow. I'm very aware that life is I have a very stoic philosophy about life and death, but, but Louise Hay really helped me so that if I'm the second one, you got to get that one. Done. Thank you. The second one that I'm hard headed. So it takes more than two
Warwick:minutes, all the really, really good books I've I've read ahead. You know, Everywhere I go, people give me books. just writing down and after I get enough of the same person. Okay, got to read that book. Yes. Yes. That's you're talking about you're basically talking about epigenetics.
Lynn:I am. Yeah. Yeah. The other. The other one you should be reading if you haven't, I'm sure you probably found him is Bruce Lipton, the Biology of Belief, Biology Belief, and one of my close colleagues. And I'll give a shout out to Shana liqui, who fought works deeply with him along with some other techniques, Marissa pier as well to do and she's done some work with me a fairly quick trauma relief were in a fairly short amount of time she gets you on a zoom call me not unlike what we're on. And lets you kind of go into the space where you can rewire the pattern because what I've come to realize and this is why I love the horses as well. The pressure that the horse creates, puts us in what I call the froth. And by the froth, I mean you have access to The old emotion but you have enough control to go to a new outcome versus the old outcome. So for authors like that What I mean by that is like at the edge of the ocean where it's both water and air both new and old and whatever release you you do and for anybody who's listening is going on want trauma relief I need this you've got to find somebody who will take you into or some situation that will take you into the froth meaning that the emotion and the story of the old is available to you but not overwhelming you because then you can you're in the programming the BIOS, if you will of the computer decide and now I'm going to choose something new. And so I i I'm sure you've probably tapped into good people like that, but that's the work and it's why not this why keep going back to the
Warwick:Louise Hay the work.
Lynn:The work is Kate Byron Katie colled taking this right here and Byron Katie's for questions. Oh my gosh, like I can't even tell you how many people I've taken through this. I take myself through it all the time. So her four questions when you have a thought, like, I'm no good, I can't do this. Nobody wants me. You. You take yourself through these four questions, we won't even go close too deep to them. But it's Is it true? Can I absolutely know that it's true? How do I react when I have that thought? And who would I be without that thought? And what I found is if you get those last two questions, how do I react when I have that thought, well, I, I start getting defensive, or I cut people out of my life or I double down on being a good little worker or I, you know, in my case, like when the horse is running away, how do I react when I think the horses running away, I pull back in yo instead of bringing the head around in the hips, you know? So then who would I be without that thought, and then it's all of a sudden, they're like, they get to have that picture. They get to have the orange basketball instead of the blue tree. And it's like What's the orange basketball and who I could be? And then what I have people do is turn it around. So instead of you find a way not to necessarily be opposite but similar, but positive side of what you want versus what you don't want. And so Byron Katie I highly recommend the work to Yeah, looks like we've done a lot of the same work work you're just doing it with horses and I'm doing it with people
Warwick:Yeah, well you know that like the the horses led me to the though the horses led me to understanding that I had a problem know that was shut down. And so now that's you know, yeah, that's a that's a bit of a journey on it on its own, but what's really cool with the horses now is is now I can read little things. They told me when I'm not present, every time Yeah. And so present, I just have to be aware of what they're doing in not present
Lynn:I every time I've had Had a breakthrough with the horses at the barn. And I'm like, I know you're with them every day, I'm, I'm lucky to get to do two to three days a week. And it's not my own horse. It's somebody else's horses always. But I'll have a breakthrough. Next time I'll go in. And if I go in with expectations, instead of being present, I always get my ass kicked. And if I can just remember, you know, the expectations may come up, but then I go back to presence. Usually something magical unfolds, as long as I can stay present.
Warwick:That's where the magic happens.
Lynn:That's where the magic happens. That may have to be the title of our podcast is something around the magic of presence, because it seems to me like you've really, you've really been able to demonstrate how to do that.
Warwick:So it's, you know, it's been funny, like, since I've done all the inner work, you know, I'll be a horse Expo or a clinic or whatever, and someone have a host of having trouble with it. And I'll say, well hang on to me and I'll show you what I would do with it. And they sometimes they hand the horse to me and the horse just goes And so it's not something I did at the time. It's all the other stuff I've been doing away from horses and it didn't used to happen and it's not something I don't you know, it's not like a mentally picture where I want to do it's just there's got to be some sort of a change in my energy from what it used to be. For that to happen. It's it's been crazy to, to view it for me in here. Like it's not like I'm watching it happen to someone else. I'm watching it happen to me and it's kind of surreal. Yeah, almost like in a third person. thing like, wow,
Lynn:wow. But it's tangible. I you know, when you did the breath, I'm remembering I was sitting on the back of one of the horses over at Cedar Creek stables where I ride nearby. And as horses were going out, there's a big, extra big horse that Ben and I watched the horse I was on it. I just tuned in. I was like, Oh, she doesn't like that horse. In the moment. I tuned in to her like sending him like little you know, five don't like you. As soon as I did that that horse just went and almost like, almost shut me off with like sort of a, just a big deep breath. And it was like we connected and for the rest of that ride that horse and I were like bonded. But I think
Warwick:that's the key is just being able to be present and, and, you know that noise would be a dog with a bone going down the wooden stairs,
Lynn:all right.
Warwick:You know it clinics, I tell people that, you know, I asked two people have a meditation practice and a lot of people get mad and I get, you know, I don't like that or whatever. And I said, you know, meditating is just controlling what your mind thinks about and when you are around your horse, you need to be able to control what your mind thinks about so it's basically practice. It's practicing what you're going to do with your horse when you're not with your horse. And especially if you're out riding like you and that horse runs off. Right then you have to be able to control what your mind thinks of it. And a big blue tree thing would be pulling back in both rounds, squeezing the legs out, whoa, an orange basketball thing we'd be thinking, Okay, what have I got to do here? To ensure I survive this thing, I'm going to reach down this rain put a bandaid on the, it's just, it's controlling what your mind thinks about. And if you can't control what your mind thinks about when Nothing's going on, you really can't control your mind thinks about when you're on the back of an animal that's leaving town.
Lynn:That so here's the maybe good code for that story because my teacher would be headed me on the back of the Arabian Friday to go out and do what we call control chaos. So what she was doing was getting us out of the arena. This is a very alert, very dominant minded horse. And I was talking to her about I'm learning how to do rowing shell in the water. It's a skull, you know, with the rowing force. And I was trying to explain to her at this moment how it was helping me with my writing and helping me with my scheme and I The moment she said, Well, how can that help? I said, Well, instead of reaching for my I said, I'm reaching for my tools, instead of my and now we are not 100 feet, maybe 50 feet off of a road with a big dump truck coming down, walking along a creek. She's in front of me and a big bird. We think maybe a turkey comes off under my horse's nose. So we're no longer in control chaos. We're in real chaos. And this is 100 times worse than the situation that put me in the hospital. Now I immediately My first thought was pull back and go Whoa, but I had been training not just my technique, but mostly my mind under pressure to know what to do. And all these things flew through my mind just like the bird flew first Can I you know, it was like Oh shit, panic, want to pull back. What about the truck? I can't go towards the truck got to go away from the truck wisely and not telling me what to do because their name is Lindsay. Oh, Because she's having to control her horse that all happened in less than a split second. And then with a tremendous amount of calmness, given the circumstance, I reached down for the right rein kicked my right heel back, brought him around, Goddess feet crossed up on the back. And we didn't go to horse links and we're facing the back to the creek where the turkey had come out or whatever it was, and all as well. And I had this moment where I was like, that's divine intervention, I looked to the sky and said, Thank you, because not only was I reaching for my tools, not my panic, I that's going to be the finish of the sentence. But God gave me an opportunity to test it in the moment. And I'm not saying I've got it down forever, but that's the thing is we've got to retrieve these things in the moment right? when it counts. So when Linda her horse, of course, she's a very advanced rider and the rest of the session was working with his fear in mind, but I owed my fear and he didn't seem to mind Cuz Believe me both he and I were thinking about turkeys in the creek after that.
Warwick:You froze there for
Lynn:a sec. Yeah, so did you. Okay. So anyway, did you hear my last? I said both our thinking about turkeys in the creek.
Warwick:Yep. So you you've been doing some rowiing?
Lynn:Yes.
Warwick:So years ago probably mid 2000s I took a job. So I was training horses and I took a job for a wealthy client of mine. Training horses privately for them for three years. And this guy was a he was the biggest headhunter in Silicon Valley. Actually, the husband was he he's the guy that introduced Steve Cook to Tim. Tim Cook to Steve Jobs, actually. Oh, wow. But he had been a runner. And then he's nice, got real good. So then he started growing. And so he was really into growing like he went to Go to Canada. There's one guy in Canada who's like one of the best guy coaches in the world. And he was trying to explain to me, you know, exactly what you got to, you know, the things you got to be able to control and just, you know, it's just like a, it's just a, it's not a physical thing. It's a mental thing. And you got to be able to just, in order to have that perfect stroke, you've got to be able to put everything together, just draw it and it was really it was really interesting hearing how it was a real mental challenge, just been able to do that perfect stroke every time. Yes,
Lynn:it's the it's one of the most challenging things I've had to learn because the minute you start thinking too much the minute you think I'm doing it, you're not doing it.
Warwick:I'm used. You know, what I'm used is in us
Lynn:of a head thing that goes on like that. I have one
Warwick:everyone is just like when so you have it. You have it set on the rainforest one
Lynn:Birds he's the one I think.
Warwick:Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So It's the same thing like when you first start and you're like, it's raining heavily and then you finally get the birds here, but it's a good bird.
Lynn:Exactly how it is with rowing. So the minute I'm like, I'm going to work on this or I'm going to do that or I'm doing it, I you catch an oar or something and when you catch it on a rolling shelf, there's less than an inch on either side of your bud. You're right on top of the water you're going in. Now I have a rowing shell with training wheels, so I'm less likely to go in just like floats on the outside so that I can actually not because I was learning to row in cold water and not withstanding I do a lot of cold water training. I decided not to want to go in the water.
Warwick:So it's, you should come that tipping in the cold water if you're a Wim Hof.
Lynn:I'm a Wim Hoffer. I take a cold shower every morning and for those of us listening for those listening who haven't heard Wim Hof is this guy who climbed Mount Everest. I think in his shorts. He's got world records for like swimming underwater. In ice cold water, and he does breathing training and mindset training and Cold training. And people have asked me, Why do I take a cold shower every morning? I've been doing it for years. And what I've realized is that talk about maybe being able to control your thoughts or being a confidence builder. It's this. If I can be in a hot shower, and turn on the cold, I'm not going to die. Feels like I am but I'm not going to die. And then actually feel the refreshment of it. It gives me a level of confidence that I cannot get any other way and then that I can translate into places where I need confidence.
Warwick:Yeah, I found I've been there's even I think there's even more benefits, at least for me. It's for me, it's that one thing every day cuz Have you ever jumped out of a plane?
Lynn:I have no intention of ever jumping out of a perfectly good plane. I've flown a plane by myself but I've never Leaving one.
Warwick:What about bungee jump? Have you bungee jump?
Lynn:nope not you remember my
Warwick:jumping out of a plane or bungee jumping? Your body rejects both those things really, really strongly. But getting into like an ice bath your body rejects that just as strongly but bungee jumping or jumping out of a plane, you might die. Yeah. Where's the old you're not gonna die. But you get to have that internal argument it's just a strong internal argument your body rejects it just as badly as jumping off a platform wherever we bring New Zealand or whatever you know, and familiar it's and maybe the cold shower as rejected that much that ice bath does.
Lynn:ice bath is bad. I mean, bad that way in our mind.
Warwick:But for me, the cold shower is every day I have this argument. Like I can just skip it to that. Yeah, like no unit. And then like okay for example, And then go and when you're done with it you like, so glad I did that because it's uh, you know, when you when you get out of the cold shower, it feels great.
Lynn:That's the best I've come to, like, even when I'm having the argument and I have the argument many days, but that's what I say remember how good it's gonna feel. And I will say most days, especially in the dead cold of winter, I'll finish and then kind of wish I would have gone longer. So the next day, I'll try to remember that and go a little longer.
Warwick:How long you can only go for,
Lynn:you know, short days is 30 seconds, some days longer. Every now and then just for mental training. I will do a full cold shower, meaning I start cold and end cold. Yeah, those days are really argumentative. Like I struggle with those. Yeah. Now in the summer, that's easy in the summer, if it was like if we'd been out all day and then we're going out to dinner and I'm going to take a shower before we go out. I will most the time do that as a culture.
Warwick:I usually do it two minutes. I'm going That electric toothbrush that that buzzes every 30 seconds. And so I'll do the top outside, and I'll have the cold water here. Yeah, then I'll put the cold water here. And then I'll go back to there. And so I'll just do 30 seconds and each quarter sort of thing.
Lynn:Oh, that's good. That's a good, that's really good training. Well, I'm a huge believer, and that is a tremendously good method. I've given it as a practice for a lot of my clients for confidence training. Although it sounds insane. I do think he's breathing method is a good thing to do with it. I don't think you want to. I mean, you can just go step 10 do cold showers. But you know, there's a Wim Hof has an app, which I'll put I'll put all these things we talked about in the show notes with links so people can find them and that's, that's the main thing for you. I want to be sure and let everybody know and I'll put links in that if I as you can see today, as long as we've gone, I couldn't get enough of your Warwick and I'm sure people are going to want to hear more about you. I will put in the show notes. twice to find you on Facebook and so forth because you put out these amazing videos and you're almost never skip one of your videos. That's a lot of people videos, I watch yours.
Warwick:Thank you.
Lynn:So I'll be sure that everybody gets that linkage so any final and I'll make sure also that we've got ways for people to get in touch with you But let me ask that question how do people get in touch with you
Warwick:either on social media you know, I've got a on my Facebook group is private so you have to join that but my I've got a Facebook page message on there or my Facebook profiles open anyway so people can message me there or email
Lynn:or email okay. And do you dare give it out here would you rather me just to put it in the show notes for those who want to go dig
Warwick:it's probably easy to put in the show notes because what I say and how you spell it is two different and we have to go through all of that so I'll make sure if you're okay with it because I have that is in the show. I don't want to go through all that because I I have a Starbucks name. So I don't have to go through that at Starbucks. So let's not do it.
Lynn:Let's not do that. So any final messages for my audience before we wrap up this has been, I can't thank you enough how amazing this has been.
Warwick:It's been great fun. And you know, it's always fun to talk to like minded people who talk about the same stuff with any the I think the whole secret to everything is just learning how to be present. Wow, that's, that's, that's that's the sacred right there. Now, that sounds simple, but it's pretty hard. But that's,
Lynn:it's, it's everything and it applies all over and you don't have to be a yogi to do it. Whether you're in the boardroom or in the barn. presence makes a difference. Yeah. So very good. cannot thank you enough for doing this. I look forward to following you and hope we can stay in touch. Yeah, I'd love to. Thanks so much. Your Thank you. We'll see ya. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to the creative spirits unleashed. podcast. I started this podcast because I was having these great conversations and I wanted to share them with others. I'm always learning in these conversations, and I wanted to share that kind of learning with you. Now what I need to hear from you is what you want more of and what you want less of. I really want these podcasts to be a value for the listeners. Also, if you happen to know someone who you think might love them, please share the podcast and of course, subscribe and rate it on the different apps that you're using, because that's how others will find it. Now, I hope you go and do something very fun today.
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