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Welcome to the Compass Conversations podcast.
We're a community of professional peers who love learning with and from each other. In other words, we choose collaboration over competition.
Every conversation here is organic. Even the opening topic isn't settled until five minutes before we hit record. And the rest is riffing off of each other's brilliance.
Thanks for hanging out with us in a new paradigm of learning, teaching and expansion where presence and non-competitive conversation create the space to learn without having to be schooled.
Compass Conversations is a project of the Intuitive Learning Foundation. Visit www.intuitivelearningfoundation.org/compass-conversations to learn more about the podcast and contribute as a volunteer or support our projects with tax-deductible donations!
Kerri:
Beautiful. Hello everybody and thank you so much for coming and playing with this episode of Compass Conversations. I'm Kerri Lake and this conversation includes Shea Stewart, Tik Maynard, Jessica White Plume, Daniel Dauphin, or Dauphin and Barbara Schulte.
As always, I am going to open the podcast with our invocation, which is that these conversations are shared from our sense of connection, camaraderie, and love. This community of peers is curious to learn from and with one another, living, learning, and leading by example. We're exploring together, acknowledging the interspecies family on this planet, while lovingly including ourselves in the family of life from the heart for the heart.
That's what I'm here for anyway, so I hope we're all, we're all going to just continue to cultivate and share this shared space, not only in the equestrian world, but I mean it can't help but ripple out because the equestrian world touches so many other different facets of human life.
And today, the topic that we get to start with today is a deep one, it goes deep for me, and again, not just in the horse world, but the curiosity in this. I'm just really excited to see where each of us is going to take this, but the idea is looking at what it might be like to be really, truly competitive without being combative, or maybe some people think that you can't be competitive without a combative edge, without that drive to dominate.
And I just see in the horse world especially, so many people shifting to where they'd like to participate in the things that they love, but maintaining a hard edge is just harder and harder. It seems to be creating a bit of a schism, so I'm just kind of curious to hear what each of your thoughts are on this idea of, “can we be really competitive without being combative’, and how do you see that rippling into life in general?
So Barbara, I'm going to hand it over to you because you've got lots and lots of experience being competitive and also transformational, so please take us away.
Barbara:
Okay. Well, it's just so interesting, and thank you for framing the question. And I think it's really an important one because competition in the horse world, rightly or wrongly so, is often seen as having a lot of, let's just say, negative chinks in the armor for lots of different reasons. And I believe, and also know from personal experience and from coaching, that by healthy, I mean thriving in your life and in your purpose for being, that competition can have such a different purpose than the apparent traditional, perhaps combative, dominating kind of spirit, and actually by nature.
I'll just talk briefly a little bit about myself. I am not a competitive person. In other words, I have no desire to dominate. In fact, I have a tremendous desire to collaborate and to listen and to learn. That just has always been my nature, but I grew up in a family that showed and we had a lot of horses, like 500. And so the family business was improving horses that dad bought, sold, and traded, and one of the ways that we marketed them was that the kids, there are five of us. Every weekend we went to horse shows and competed, and the idea was not to bring those horses home, rather sell them at the show, and so that's how I grew up.
And then I'll make a huge leap. I went to undergraduate college, graduate school in speech pathology and audiology because I got a little burned out growing up. And then my husband, at the time we were engaged, was watching my brother-in-law and my family business and said, do you know how to do this? Because at the time I was in graduate school in Washington State, and I said, yeah, I know how to do that. It was with cutting horses, and so he goes, well, this just looks like fun, what do you think?
And so anyway, he's the one that got me back into horses after a little sabbatical. And when I started riding and showing and training, I noticed early on that some people dominated the sport in terms of being in the winner's circle and it wasn't always the ones with the best horse. So I wanted to know what was going on which led me to the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Florida. Where they trained Olympic and professional athletes. I got trained as a performance coach.
And what happened, and I'll just say this as succinctly as I can, in my knowledge today, I learned how to become very self-aware. To recognize what nervous system state I was in, if I was in a high, negative, like angry, frustrated, distracted, any of those kinds of things, how to return in a moment. Because that's the research that they were doing, to a kind of a wave, a combination of calmness and focus and really positive, engaged, focused, and very engaged energy.
And I fell in love with that energy and the tools that I learned to access it. Because we can't be in any kind of situation at our best, unless we're in, at some place in that nervous system state. And I took that to heart and lived and breathed it, and within a couple years, won a couple national championships. But I don't say that for any other thing, except the incredible turn it had in my life, and with my work with horses.
So to me, what I
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took my nature, to answer your question, I took my nature and began to love getting into this, almost like incredible high of focus, that I practiced at home but it seemed like the real hallmark of it was at a competition and with no thought really of winning, but of just really getting my horses ready, myself ready, and being my best at the show, and so that's why I love competition. And you know, there's so many other parts about competition, all the people there and all of that, that can be a really great community, so I really actually miss that now.
But I'll stop talking, because there's five other people here to talk, but anyway, I think that having a clear sense of value, and values, and knowing your each person's purpose, why they compete, doesn't really have that much to do with other people, it has to do with your own journey, and reaching a level of excellence.
Kerri:
Thanks Barbara. Tik, I'm curious, I love Barbara's question, why do we each compete, and I want to hand it to you now, like maybe around that question. Or what are your thoughts, like what's competition for you, and have you come across this combative feeling, and if you have, has it changed over time, where does this all land in your world?
Tik:
So I think, just like Barbara said, I think, I think it's a journey for everybody, it's certainly a journey for me, and where, how I thought about competition 20 years ago, is very different than how I think about it now, and I think it'll be very different than how I think about it in another 20 years, I think probably, you know, as a kind of just very general, sort of zoom out way of looking at it, is that I think every year for the last 20 years, I've become, you know competing itself and winning in particular, has become slightly less important. And doing things like groundwork, spending time with the horse, going through the process, being curious, learning how to do things better, and all that stuff has become more important a little bit, that shift has happened very gradually over the past 20 years.
When I think about the word combative, I guess my mind immediately kind of wonders, there's probably different ways that we might think of being combative. I think that you might think of maybe being combative against the horse, and I think that's probably, for myself anyway, the easiest thing to not be combative. First of all, because I just don't like to be combative with the horse, but second of all, I don't think it's very helpful to either have a great relationship, or with winning. Even if that was the only goal, was winning, I don't think it's very helpful for that.
Second of all, there's being combative with like the other people, you know, trying to beat other people. And I put maybe occasionally, I struggle with that, you know, like you're trying to win, or you want to beat somebody else, but even that's probably not the biggest struggle, the biggest thing is when you're combative, or I'm combative with myself. And you're holding yourself to a certain standard, or you feel like things should be going better. And the other day I asked a sports psychologist, what percentage of people were, whether it's CEOs or athletes, what percentage of people she thought got to that high level out of sort of a positive mindset of going towards something, rather than a negative mindset of like trying to beat somebody, or go away from something.
And she said in her opinion, 90% of successful athletes and CEOs were not coming from a great place in why they were successful. She said it's much rarer to see somebody come from a really emotionally balanced, thoughtful, kind of positively energetic place, and be successful. So I think there's lots of ways to be successful. And I think probably that struggle that you have with yourself, that's probably the hardest way. That's the biggest journey.
Kerri:
Completely agree, and anybody's welcome to pop in with any comments at any time. I know for myself, I haven't done an extensive amount of competing, just low level, just above schooling level, just because of circumstances mostly. But even, and maybe even especially at the lower levels, there are people who put so much pressure on themselves to do well, and win, and make sure their horse looks the way they need to on that day, like you're speaking to. Taking the battle within ourselves is often the harshest.
And I, kind of like Barbara said, was never hugely interested in winning, per se, and never expected to win anything, because I was never considered a good rider, or a pretty rider. I was effective, but not pretty, and so I would just go into the show, and be friends with my horse, and tootle around. And then all of a sudden somebody's handing me a blue ribbon, and I'm like, what the heck. Like I had to go ask them, are you making a mistake here because all I did was go dink around.
And in the total absence of competition, I just went in, enjoyed, talked to my horse, and the few judges that I was in front of, were able to see that and I just think it's a wonderful thing. I think people work themselves up to think you've got to be high strung, and in total survival mode, and if you're not pushing that hard, then you've got no chance of winning, and I'm hoping people are starting to realize, like you just said Tik, that it might not be very helpful to the path, or the outcome.
Daniel:
I was just going to say one of my new favorite sayings, is that there's competition at the bottom, and collaboration at the top. The thing I've competed in the most, is kind of this clinician game, and I've been to events, where one clinician will walk out there, and say something, and the next clinician comes behind him, and just tears down everything that that person said, and it's a real backstabbing sort of the deal. And then I've been to other events, where everybody was kind of, it was like a jazz session, or something. They were taking the notes you played, and they played, and it
just had this synthesis to it. And everything was great. And you were kind of in that flow state, and that's kind of how I view it.
It's generally backstabbing, and stuff is associated with the worst parts of competition, but you can be competitive with one another, trying to do your best, and still be collaborative while trying to move the whole thing forward. I would totally agree with what Tik was saying, where the majority of the highly, highly driven people are probably driven, and motivated by things that we wouldn't consider good. And there are a lot of different definitions of winning, and success. I would also say that the good thing about competition is it does give us boundaries, rules, and objective things to stay between so that we have a direction to head.
We've all seen people that ride well, and they ride with their horse, but they kind of ride at home by themselves, and they never really go anywhere. Five years from now, they're going to be doing the same things that they're doing right now, because they don't have anything to aim at, and to push, and drive towards. I would also say that most of us probably really enjoy that partnership that you build with a horse, and the best way that I know to build that partnership, is by challenging them, and getting through those challenges successfully, and the competition gives us the excuse, and the reason to do that.
We're not in a time when you have to plow with a horse for your survival anymore, so we kind of have to manufacture these little games that we go play, and hopefully we play those games with integrity, and everything. I'll also say, and I'm sure those of you that have competed have seen this, there's a lot less rhyme and reason to winning in that world than you can imagine.
I came up in the cutting horse world, and I know a guy very well who won his very first world championship with a bad set of cows. And one of them happened to be blind, and nobody wanted to cut that cow, but they all had penalties. He went out and cut a blind cow three times that stood there without moving, and he marked a 70. He won a world championship off of it. And so sometimes the story behind these winnings is a lot less dramatic, or enthusiastic, and motivating than we might think. Sometimes the awards are a little more hollow than we might believe. So I think it really depends on the individual, and what they're considering success. I think you need to know that before you get into competition. If you don't know what you're heading toward, you just bounce around aimlessly, and that's no good for anyone.
Kerri:
Well, that goes back to what Barbara was saying, and the knowing, and why am I doing what I'm doing? Why, if I go compete, why? It takes courage to know that, you know, because self-awareness and self-knowledge, it does take courage to any degree. It takes the willingness to, I don't know, for even just a moment, trust yourself to not judge yourself. And to just sort of get clear, like this is why I'm going forward, and be open to it going really well. I'm curious, Shea, because your work is so much about the body, and how the body responds. I'm so curious how this is all landing from your lens around competition, and the different ways it can be done.
Shea:
Yeah, I took some notes as people were talking. And Barbara, she influenced something in me, a thought in my head, because an actual horse show, horse competition is not my world at all. I did one show when I was nine years old, and I hated it, because I didn't like what it did to all my friends that I rode with, you know, and lessened with. So it just wasn't my thing.
But I mean, the world we live in, if we live in a profit-driven world, then we're all, it's a competitive world, so that's just kind of how, that's the only, you know, angle I can think of about competition. I think, because I used to train, and there were other trainers that did something similar, and in a sense, you know, I guess you could say we competed against each other. But I never thought of the work I do as a zero-sum game, where, you know, there's somebody for everybody. When we get, when we start to get combative with each other, because now I do the craniosacral, and I also teach, and you know, there's other people that teach, and we all offer something different, and when it becomes combative, that seems like a misplaced emotion, or like it doesn't belong, it's misplaced, and it's rigid.
I think, was it, did Barbara say something about being rigid versus fluid, or I wrote that down, and maybe I just made it up, I don't know. But when we live a rigid life, a combative life, and we keep our mindset in that state, we lose connection to nature, and to the divine, because that's a more fluid state to be in, and if you think about, you know, my brain is in quantum, that's where I've been all morning. If you think about the biology of our internal fluid body, and the way it's made, and the structure of the water inside of us, it actually makes a fractal antenna.
And when we live in a competitive, combative state, we actually destructure our internal water, and it loses its geometric patterning, and it actually causes our cells, technically, from a scientific point of view, to lose their negative charge, and that's what they need to be optimized. And it's like, we have this fluid body that expands out, and connects us to all living things. Even in our thoughts, if our thought process is negative, and combative, even with ourselves, we're projecting that out there, into the world. And I don't know, that's just kind of what I was thinking about, being combative, versus being in a competition.
And in a sense, life, you know, because we have to earn a living, or maybe we don't, if we just totally go live off-grid somewhere, which I think would really actually be nice, as long as I had a community around me, and then you don't have to worry about the profit. I try to keep my mindset in that point of view
anyway, and have faith that money is going to come with the right mindset. I don't know, I guess that's the end of what I was going to say. I can't think of anything else right now. I hope that wasn't too weird.
Group: I loved it. Not at all
Kerri:
It's absolutely beautiful. I just love all the different perspectives, the different ways to look at competitive and combative. I love what Daniel was saying too, that competitions give us a structure to play inside. And going on what Tik said, that there's still a vast majority of people whose motivation comes from comparison rather than inspiration, then the structure does give humanity a way to walk together and move themselves in a direction. To notice our own growth, to notice our own expansion and evolution, right?
Other questions come to my mind, you know, are horses actually interested in competition the way that humans are? And how do we, how does it feel, like, how sensitive can we be to a relationship approach to our horses versus just putting the right equipment on them that puts them in a place where they have to do things the way that we've wanted? You know, all of these things I have curiosity about, mostly just to bring things to light.
My interest in all this isn't to try to promote one way as correct, you know, that nobody should ever be combative, but the questions to me are just gold to be able to discover who we actually are and why we do what we do. And Jess, I know in your community you have gatherings and celebrations with races, you know, with people and bareback races. Will you talk about that a little bit, and where does that come from? And what's the tenor of the energy? What's it like to be among the races in your community?
Jessica:
Thank you for asking. I just love hearing from everybody here because I think this is a very special rare breed, no pun intended, of people who are at those “high levels” but are in this state of awareness, listening to their heart or their intuition, and are just functioning at that level. And Barb says it's almost like a high, where you can literally, when you get to a certain place, you can just find joy and appreciation and no matter what happens, it seems like.
And that's one of the things that I enjoy about watching ‘The Road to the Horse’. I know there's much debate about it, but I love witnessing because that's the ultimate example. Like their competitors, but they're now all, pretty much everyone, is there for the wellness of the horse too. And so how does that play out in a time crunch? So to watch people like Tik or a lot of the competitors, you can literally see them say things like, “well, we're gonna go at the pace that this horse needs” or whatever. And you can tell when they really mean it, like they're literally on TV, millions of people, yada, yada, but they can really say it doesn't matter which direction or how slow this takes.
I'm good with all of it. Like that's a level of like existing that is just amazing to me. And
just really feel fortunate to get to know more people that are living like that, including all of you all. So it's pretty amazing. And I think that is that fluidity that Shea's talking about. Where something goes in a way that you maybe, you try not to have expectations, but if you do and things change, then it doesn't throw off your whole energy and nervous system. And you're just able to flow with that. It's just incredible. And I love knowing you all and the Schillers. You know, they literally changed their program from ‘Warwick Schiller Performance Horses’, before and now it's ’Warwick Schiller Attuned Horsemanship’. So I'm just really in awe of everybody. Okay. I had to say that.
As far as, you know, I actually grew up doing races that were maybe more like what you're thinking of as far as we had Lakota War Pony races. So we're literally like just out on the hills and there's no arena and there's no track. There's just like a valley and a bunch of people gathered around. And we had these, they're more like horse games, really, it's more like what you would call a game day. But kind of grounded in more historical concepts and like picking up a fallen warrior. It's like what someone would call a rescue race. It would go back to, if one of your warriors was down in an enemy camp somehow and you had to go pick them up, it's kind of couched in those terms. And it's really, well, the way we did it at our place for many, many years, it was also a celebration day.
So it was a competition and I rode and I was the least competitive. But I did win sometimes, you know, a good amount. I mean, it's like Barb says, I was there, I was competing, but not really competing. And the feel of it is, it was just more of a celebration of partnership with the horse's relation.. You know, things that you can do together, just kind of celebrating the amazingness of what a horse and their person, a person and their horse can do together. I guess that's how it felt to me.
Now fast forward, I am up here in North Dakota and it's really interesting because it's, you know, it's cowboy country. There's a lot of the tough parts that came with colonization, the reservations, the plows, the cows and the kind of tough mentality or whatever. So a lot of the traditional concepts of horsemanship are gone, which is a huge part of our work is to try to reconnect with a lot of that.
But, so it's big rodeo country. There's many, many Hall of Famers from our reservation, from MHA, where I am now, which is where my husband is, his tribes. And you see a lot of combative stuff in rodeo country. It's more of the rare person who's able to go in with that positive light and do it in the ways that we're talking about. And then there is now, this big deal is relay racing, which you're probably mentioning. Indian relay racing is a really big deal now.
I mean, we've done it forever, but it's become kind of mainstream. So if you're not familiar, it's a relay race with one rider and three horses around either a track, or sometimes they'll go off the track and through the hills. There's a thing called the Ultimate Warrior Challenge in Crow, which is, actually, this is an aside, but maybe it is relevant, but so the Ultimate Warrior Challenge in Crow is a really big deal and it's like a triathlon. So it's running, canoeing, and then a three horse relay, bareback. Where they go around the track, off the track and uphill, downhill and all over the place. Then back on the track you jump on your second horse bareback.
It's a really, really tremendous competition and Marty won it twice. And this is such a good conversation to make me think about it, that is competition. But there is a different feel to it. I'm not going to say it's like this perfect avatar, like all natives are perfectly in tune with all animals. It's, you know, there's a range. Everybody is still exploring that within themselves, I think, at different levels. But there is a different feel to it because of the understanding of the horses being our relative, that we are basically coexisting in thanks to each other. And that's kind of the spiritual act that we have as a baseline.
And it's not like we all sit around and talk about that all day, but that is the undertone to everything that's happening is that the respect for the horses are at this level of a species and a nation in our kind of language is that it's the horse nation. And they have given of themselves so that we can survive. And it's more like a collective consciousness as another terminology. And so there is that feel. But there's also, again, a lot of colonization and violence, and so we're exploring that just like everybody else, I would say.
And I'm happy to be where we have this college equine studies degree program, and we're literally having these conversations. And our beautiful friend Barb is coming as we've had some discussions and she's coming to North Dakota. Because that's exactly what we need, this discussion, this exploration, how can we keep relationships first, keep our spirits whole and honored, and yet have some goals like Daniel said, you know, like do some stuff.
Kerri:
That makes me feel like what an amazing exchange. Like what would it take to bring the horse nation conversation into conventional equestrian circles? To just keep planting those seeds, to recognize the species for who they are, recognize the generosity of that species, right? It's just a different perspective than like Shea was saying, like if we're in a world that's built on profit and achievement, then a lot of the time humans narrow our perspective to say, well, the horse is a tool to my achievement. Yes, I love them, but they're still a tool to my achievement, right? What is the priority?
And I, I'm just so curious what ripples would be created if there was space to just bring the perspective and the stories from that heart of the horse nation and the generosity of that species toward ours, into the conventional
equestrian world. That's a big curiosity for me. Like, that's something I would love to be a part of.
Barbara:
A little bit about my personal view about our lives and not to get too theoretical or whatever, but I just so believe that we each need each other, you know, horses and people. And we're each so unique and we're really meant to thrive and to grow in our own individual ways. We're just, we're just so unique and our lives give us the opportunity to explore our own hearts and then to make choices. And I think in the world of competition that yes, there is an atmosphere or can be an atmosphere of measurement externally, who's the best and all of that. And some people with values that would not be in alignment with mine and the way that they get there.
But I think it gives us the opportunity to be who we are. And we have that in everything that we do in our everyday lives to kind of speak our truth, if you will, without having to convince the rest of the world. But be at ease knowing, I mean, I certainly have changed the way I think about horse training since I stopped taking outside horses and really stopped riding and training a number of horses. But I have my horse friend here and so much of my perspective has changed just like Tik said, it's such a journey.
And I just think it is fully possible to have the most openhearted, wholehearted personal journey for the welfare of the horse with high expectations to perform at a high level, but in a true partnership. Where the horse feels confident and good. The rider is excited because what competition does is it gives you a certain time and a place to exhibit, for lack of a better word, your best.
And so just because it's been a traditional way and continues to have this kind of energy that you might, that someone might feel like they don't have much camaraderie or someone to share their values. But I think that with non-professionals and amateurs, the reason that they show horses is because they love horses. They, of course, want to do well and compete and win and all that, but they do it truly because they love the horse.
So anyway, my point in all that is that I think, we individually make it whatever we want it to be and totally aware of that a certain kind of culture exists in certain kinds of horse show environments. But in Texas, we have this fabulous horse show organization called Stock Horse of Texas that is family oriented. It was an organization that was originally built on education for people, and it's a multi-event. It's kind of an entry level to Rein Cowhorse, which Rein Cowhorse reminds me of three day eventing because of the three competitions. But it's like this most amazing organization that is very welcoming of people and people helping each other. It's a very high vibe organization.
So I think there are places, and I also think that we create for ourselves whatever we want. And we don't have to convince the world that we certainly can share whatever whenever.
Daniel:
I was
kind of thinking that both the title of your podcast here and a guy named Jean Piaget, who discovered the play circuit in mammals, and that's really where kids start socializing. You think of little kids, they'll jump into a game they don't know with a group of kids they don't know, and they'll have a blast for two hours, and they come out of that smelling like a little puppy dog, and then you ask them who they played with, and they're like, I don't know, I didn't even learn their names, but we all cooperated as strangers for two hours and all.
And I think that's kind of the essence of what competition is. It is a part of our social structure, and it is a part of how we integrate ourselves with one another. And it's also, I mean, horses play as well, right? We've all seen foals out there pawing at one another and pretending to buck and kick and all of these things, and it's, it's a, if you take the horse that doesn't get to do that, they wind up the unsocialized outsider that we would all hate to train if he came into our barn. That's a necessary part of it.
So, if you think about it from that essence, when we go and compete, we are actually dealing with our inner child. And your Compass Conversations, the underlying deal of that is that we all agree there's a North. And that agreement is a pretty important thing, and it gives us that common thing to aim toward. So, I think when you look at it like that, like when I had you on my podcast, Kerri, I was saying that we are kind of on, initially, I was saying we were on opposite ends of a spectrum here, and through our conversation, I came to realize I was looking at it wrong. We're not on opposite ends of a spectrum. We're on different points of a circle, and there's a loop that leads back around. So, if we're all going to agree that there's North, then competition isn't necessarily bad or good. It just has those elements like everything else does.
I also was thinking about the two wolves inside of you. Would you rather them compete or collaborate? So, I don't know. This could get deep. I don't know if we have enough time for all of that..
Kerri:
That's beautiful, Daniel. Thank you. I love that. I love that shift being on two points of the same circle. Perhaps that's apt in any realm. Whenever you see somebody that has something very different, a different point of view, even a curiosity, where are they on the circle? And have I been there before? Because a lot of where I've come to has been through the contemplation. Somebody does something that I find horrific, or I have the judgment for being combative or being rough with the horses, or there's things that I've never done and would never do.
But there's some things that I did do when I didn't know a different way. And so, anytime I see or feel a judgment, then I always ask myself, okay, where is that familiar to me? Where have I experienced it before? How did I ever learn to have an opinion about it? And your imagery of two points on a circle, Daniel, is really cool. I appreciate that.
Shea:
Something Daniel said touched me, and it made me think about humans and how we're social creatures, and we no longer, well, most of us no longer live in that tribal community. And horses also are social, and they need a herd to live in, and a lot of them don't have that either. And so we've disconnected ourselves from this true nature and our animals too. So, I think having competitions with horses helps people come back to that a little bit, you know. It's like they come back to, they feel like they have their tribe, you know. So, it is a good thing.
I remembered when I was a kid, we used to do horse camping and go on, I don't even remember what it was called, but a bunch of families, we'd all go out somewhere rural, horse camp and play games. It was more, someone would win, so it was a competition, and it was game-like on horseback. we'd have to go, what are they called, where you go find things that are scavenger hunts and stuff like that. And it was just so much fun and playful, a lot of play. And anyway, that was a good point that Daniel made, and it made me think about that, and how we need that sense of community that's deep in our biology, we need that. And we've kind of created a life where we don't have it like we should, actually. And I think these competitions maybe help that a little bit.
Kerri:
Well, that makes me think about blending, like what we're all sort of talking about, that Barbara is pointing out, we can bring our true selves into it. We don't have to be at the mercy of the external environment, right? So what would it be like, and I'm just going to start at the top levels of competition, because they're so visible, they're broadcasted on TV, and there's a lot of discussion and probably a lot of opinions about what's going on. And there's a lot of money that exchanges hands, and money tends to be put up at the top, because of the perspective that without the money, none of this would be happening. So what if we just acknowledge all of that, and instead as individuals, show up to play, right?
Like what would that be like for people to find in themselves? And I guess I'm tossing this out there, because that is sort of sprinkling the fairy dust, like, hmm, I wonder everybody, let's give it a try, you know? But what might that shift if people really did give themselves the permission? And have the courage to show up in an environment that wants to steamroll you into a good advertisement, or something like that, to make you what it wants. But instead just show up, willing to play, and do your best with your pony friend, regardless of what money goes into it. Sure, good, money, good, whatever. Well, I mean, what would that create, if people could start doing that?
That makes me want to ask Tik again, you know, going into Road to the Horse, where was your heart in all of that? What motivated you to go to that particular competition? Because that's a pretty specific
competition. It's a pretty small group of people who play that way. Like, what is it that took you there?
Tik:
I feel like a lot of what we're talking about and what you guys are saying, I'm almost hearing as advice for me as I'm getting ready to do it again because I'm going back in March to compete at Road to the Horse for the second time. And I'm kind of like taking this in and thinking, you guys are so smart and like to have some, almost feels like you're talking directly towards me even though we're talking to everybody else. So it's really nice and it's nice to sort of get honest feedback in a way that feels collaborative and it's not like telling me what to do but it's like, you know, it gets me thinking.
You know, the biggest thing for me with Road to the Horse was probably two things. One was the desire to get better at starting horses. And I think that is one thing that competition, you know, there's probably that people that can do it without competition, but I thrive with like having deadlines, competitions, tests and exams, like I don't think I would, you know, like I run two or three times a week because I have a goal of doing a 5k twice a year. And I think if I didn't have just that friendly weekend Saturday morning 5k twice a year, I don't think I would kind of put as much effort into running two to three times a week and it's the same thing with horses. It kind of gives me that goal and pushes me a little bit.
And in getting ready for Road to the Horse this past March, I think I probably learned more about starting horses in the six months leading up to it than I did probably about starting horses in the previous 10 years before that. And I spent a lot of time reading books, watching videos, talking to people, watching past years, going through simulations of starting it, taking clinics with different people that start horses around the world. I went to Argentina. I did something called the Chicken Camp in Seattle where you learn how to train chickens.
I did all this stuff to kind of get better at that and it really pushed me. It was like, you know, at the forefront of my mind like probably 80% of the waking moments of my life for like 66 months leading up to it. Occasionally my kids or the bills would sneak ahead of it for a little bit, but it was like really on my mind all the time trying to get better at that. And lots of, you know, lots of big picture stuff, but also just so many details that can make life a little smoother, a little bit more polite for the horse.
I remember with Martin Black, putting the saddle on and off. It must have been like over a hundred times where he's just standing there watching me as I put it on and take it off and like trying to get it just the right way so it smoothly goes on. It doesn't plop on them. It doesn't hit the back. The outside stirrup doesn't jar them. Just trying to get it just right. And so many examples of that. How I approach the horse, trying to find just the right moment where
as they look at me or the ear goes towards me or touch the hand, I'm trying to retreat at the moment where it's beginning to happen. So I'm not even waiting until they touch my hand. I'm like retreating as they are doing it and their whiskers touching my hand. It's like just trying to find all these little details.
The other big thing was when I went to watch it, I've only seen it live myself once, I've seen a lot of years on DVD, but I watched it live in 2023. And before that, when I'd watched it, I'd always thought it was a test of horsemanship and a test of colt starting and a test of how good you could read horses and your feel and timing. And when I watched it live with all that pressure that you don't really experience until you actually watch it live, you know, there's thousands of people watching, there's judges, there's television cameras, they hype up the prize money, there's a saddle you can win, and there's a lot of like hype and atmosphere. And when I watched it in 2023, I really realized for the first time how much more it is a test of character than a test of horsemanship.
And once I realized that, then it's like a whole new sort of goal for myself. Which is, can I stay true to my principles, even with all this pressure on me. And that was the bigger challenge, honestly.
Kerri:
Wow. Thank you for sharing that. It's an exquisite perspective, and I just so appreciate you being here, sharing your experience.
Daniel:
And that reminds me, Tik, can you get me the license plate of the guy whose tires you wanted me to slash this year, too? He forgot to send that, too. (chuckling)
Tik:
I’ll get that to you. (chuckling)
Jessica:
That's funny. Yeah, I love what you're saying, and maybe I'm going to use that line now because if someone asks why we are such geeks with Road to the Horse, I mean, we are about horses and training and starting, especially all those details. But what you just said, it's a show of character under a very specific situation that dives into all this stuff. And maybe that's part of why we really lock the door and enjoy watching it here. I do love what Kerri mentioned earlier, and that's on my mind about, it's kind of like consent with the horses, and do they enjoy it? And I just read another thing that, you know, consent obviously is a very human concept, so they don't give or not give consent like we would think of it. But are they enjoying it?
So just speaking for myself, I'm trying to think about it as a challenge, you know, being more, how can I notice their joy in any given situation? And maybe, bonus points, find a way to enhance it or just build on it, connect in it or something to that effect. And I think the people who excel are probably doing that already. But I love that conversation and that framing of it, you know?
Kerri:
That's largely why my own work has gone in the direction that it has to start with the humans. And to help people find in themselves the capacity to recognize the joy in the horse, the
try, the willingness, and the curiosity in the horse. Because if we're going at them like, I can make you do this, so, and I'm the best at making horses do this and we think what we're doing is creating connection. We're not. We're still a fire hose of human desire and human agenda, right? But to instead steer our human awareness toward the feeling we want to create, the feeling we want to offer. That to me, it goes in the same direction that you're talking about Tik, is about, you get to know your real character. Can I stay true to my character regardless of the external circumstances, right?
And like Daniel's talking about, we're going toward the North. We all agree there is a North. Everyone I listen to, the conversation comes back to that. It comes back to ‘who am I’ and why. What am I contributing to the conversation? And then you develop a bunch of skills and you use a bunch of techniques and all that stuff. But for me, this is the gold in all of it, whether it's competition or just hanging out or some combination of both, horses seem to be this open door for that question for ourselves whenever we're ready to ask it.
So we've got about eight minutes left in our hour. And so if we've got some additional thoughts, this is a time to bring them up. Daniel, go.
Daniel:
One thing I wanted to say is around that idea of consent with a horse. I think sometimes we get a little too short-sighted on that. One example I'm going to give, I'm sure Barbara will be right there with me on this, if you were to take a really, really well-bred cutting colt out of smart little Lena in the 80s and 90s and started on a cow, it was going to be about to die between your legs, absolutely shaking with fear because they were terrified of cows. And so if you looked at that horse in that moment, you might say this horse is not made for this. But you look at that same horse six months later and they cannot wait to go to work in the morning.
So I think we have a responsibility to look at the bigger picture for the horses. I always use the example of if I asked my 12-year-old son if he wants to go to school this morning and I waited on his consent, he would not go to school ever. And so sometimes it is our responsibility to not wait on some of those things and just use our better judgment to push through and get them to the place.
With all the brain science that we're talking about now, there's an aspect of that special part of the brain called the striatum. And it is where the dopamine receptors lie. And it's in three parts. The first part is where we tend to see most of our calming signals. So like if Tik is working a colt in the round pen and they have that light bulb moment and we see them lick and chew and all the really obvious stuff coming, that is a sign that that horse just got a shot of dopamine reinforcing whatever the thing is that set the light bulb off.
A part of that we don't ever talk about is that when a horse is actually trained and they have an established cue, the middle part of the striatum is where the dopamine hits at that point. And that horse actually gets the dopamine hit on the front end, not the hind end. So if you have your trained reiner and you put the reins to the left to send them into the spin, the first thing that happens is they go, ‘Oh, I know what I'm supposed to do here’ and they get a dopamine shot as they start.
And if you don't believe that and you wonder whether these animals do want to compete, go look at the police dog or the black lab that's about to be sent on the retrieve. And they are just sitting there quivering, waiting on the release so that they can go do their job. And that's another example of that too. So animals definitely understand what competition is and they definitely can get to a point where they love it every bit as much as we might, even if on day 1 or day 13, that might not be obvious.
Kerri:
Speaks so much to the approach again, doesn't it? And how you walk them through that, how you lead yourself or another to recognize what we're doing, really help them understand what we're doing.
Barbara: Tik, I really admire all the study that you put into everything.
Tik: Yeah, I put a lot of time into it.
Barbara:
Yeah. That's really awesome. And I guess I have a question. Would you say that so much of what you learned was how to see things from their perspective and develop a communication or not?
Tik:
I would say, I guess it depends if you mean about horses in general, or in particular getting ready for Road to the Horse? I think for me, the biggest thing about horses, in general, like if I were to talk about specific skills or feel or timing, I would say, yeah, the number one skill, most valuable thing to have is your ability to read a horse. I think, be able to see whether you call it, see things from their perspective or read the horse, but be able to know whether they're relaxed or curious or scared or whatever, anxious.
For Road to the Horse, you know, reading the horse was a skill I have been developing for a long time. So Road to the Horse was more, the preparation was more in particular about fine tuning specific skills that are going to be relevant to starting a horse. What I found of course, is that a lot of the skills that we develop in starting a horse, they apply to a lot of other things we do with horses. Just like when you go down the road and you think, well, I'm going to go take a reining lesson or a cutting lesson or a natural horsemanship lesson and if you think about them, even just a little bit, kind of deeper after that day, you start realizing how much it applies to dressage or how much it applies to jumping. And you start to see all these connections happen.
Barbara: Awesome.
Kerri:
What's the commonality in that then? Like if various skills will all apply across various disciplines, what's common? I think the common thing is your, the most common thing that I think applies across all disciplines is your ability to
read the horse.
Tik:
I think when you talk about reading the horse, there's lots of things you can look for. But I think there's really the two most important things that you're looking for, I guess that I would say you're looking for, is the horse stressed and anxious, or relaxed? And I don't think of that as a black and white. I think of it as like a whole spectrum. So it would be like, you could say like 7.2 out of 10 or 6.3 or 1.2. And the reason that's so important is yes. You want them to be relaxed. The horse has a much lower threshold for stress than people before they get to a point where they can't learn.
And if they're doing something because they're just moving out of flight, like they're just moving their feet because they're nervous and then you're steering that thing around. It happens all the time in sports that I see where somebody gets the horse to move because they're nervous. And then they're essentially steering that nervous movement onto the trailer, to the show, off the trailer, through the dressage arena, over the jumps around the course. Steering because the horse is nervous, their feet are up and they get the flying change and then whatever and you're just steering nervous movement around.
And most species of animals I don't think move that much when they're nervous, like they go to ground or go to the air or whatever way, you can get away with that with horses. But they're not going to get better and better if they're not learning. So I think having, recognizing how relaxed you actually want a horse to be, to be in a learning state of mind is so important.
Kerri: Barbara, you got something else?
Barbara:
Well, with the term that I used to think about with horses and people is focused engagement, like in amount of presence and engaged, but like Tik was saying, not over the top anxious, but not like you're watching Netflix, you know, not that horses watch Netflix, but you want that kind of energy you want to be there and you're clear about your job, or you trust the human. And so you have this exchange, this is very engaged and trustworthy and so that's just how I think about it, what you're saying, I don't know if that's what you're saying.
Tik:
I wrote that down, focused engagement. I love that. It's just that sweet spot where it's like the right amount of everything, the right amount of energy, the right amount of focus. It's not too much and it's not too little.
Kerri:
And going back to what you were saying about working with top athletes, you talked about cultivating this at home. It's not something that you drive, drive, drive, and then have focused engagement when you're in the show, right? It's a way of being. That's something that Mark Rashid talks about, that softness is not something you just go out and do (at a show). It's an absolute cultivation of a way of life and a way of being that I think, well, I just intuitively know it just depends what we're going to commit ourselves to. But taking that focused engagement, taking softness, taking the cultivation into a higher stress environment, it comes from playing with it all the time.
It's just becoming it, that's just who I am. So that by the time I am there, I walk in and, yeah, there's pressure, but ‘this is who I am’. ‘Yeah, that's happening, but this is why I'm here’. And I think it is a strong cultivation. I'm not saying it's easy. But this seems from many directions to be one way that we can show up differently in a situation that might be expecting us to abandon ourselves in the interest of a show or a sponsor or whatever the pressure point might be, right? It's the cultivation leading up into it.
Barbara:
That state is fragile. It's not like you get there and then, okay now I got it. You know, it moves around. And so the real skill of it is to be self-aware and know where you want to be at that moment. You might want to be, I don't know if this, if this example comes to mind, if I was Tik or if I was competing in Road to the Horse and I had time to rest, time to come down and take a break, it would be very important. Recovery is a really important part of that ability to manage your energy. It's just that whole awareness and how it works and how you can maintain a full tank, so to speak, of mental, physical, emotional energy for the moment.
And then also manage it within the environment because there's a gazillion things coming at you and within you. And to me, the cultivation of the skill is knowing how you want to manage that and then how to do that.
Kerri:
Reminds me of a phrase that I think comes from perhaps various martial arts traditions that the master is not the one who's never knocked off center. The master is the one who regains center with the most grace. People will say, oh, it's hard and oh, you have to be thinking about it all the time. Yes. Like, yes, you have to remain aware. It is awareness, not thinking. And that's a nuance that we could talk about for a long time. It's awareness, not thinking that you notice and bring yourself back to center.
Oh, my goodness. Would you guys like to go for another hour? Because we are at our hour for today's episode recording. You guys are so beautiful. Thank you for sharing so much, everybody. I appreciate you all. And so blessed to get to learn side by side through these conversations. So thank you so much. And we will mix and match and do this again going forward.
Barbara:
Thank you, Kerri. And I so enjoyed meeting Tik and Daniel and seeing Shea and Jessica.
Tik:
It was a privilege to meet all of you. And I look forward to kind of trying to keep in touch with everybody and see what you guys are doing in the future. Thank you very much. All right.
Group:
Same here. Thank you, all of you. Yes. That was fun. Thank you.
Daniel:
As a parting thought, I wanted to let you all know that if you're allergic to cats, you're also allergic to lions. And that sounds a whole lot cooler.
Kerri:
There you go. Thank you so much!