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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.
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Kerri:
All right, so welcome and thank you for being part of episode 22 of Compass Conversations. Today I am here with Will Brown, Jillian Kreinbring, Gray Kyle Graves, Leanne Haight, and Chris Adderson. And as we do, as we open a conversation,
I'll read our invocation, the heart and consistency throughout all of these episodes. 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.
Which seems actually so perfect for our starting point in our conversation today. That was brought up by Leanne, a beautiful curiosity and a beautiful canvas to finger paint on. Centering around Linda Kahanoff's recent book, I think it was the new edition of the Tao of Equus where Linda speaks, as she does so openly and eloquently about her own journey, that it wasn't until she fully embraced the heart and culture of horses, the teachings of the horse, it wasn't until she fully embraced it that she truly felt comfortable or at home being human.
I know for myself, that rings so familiar to me, in that when I was growing up, it was only standing next to horses that I felt like myself. In a way, they didn't require me to be anything other than what I am. I think all of Linda's explorations and that statement right there seem to point in the same direction. Leanne, do you want to take it from there and just share your thoughts after reading? Because I haven't read that book, but maybe you can share a little more of the context around it and why that touched your heart. We could talk for eons about this part.
Leanne:
Right. That particular sentence jumped out yesterday and then again today, that concept, that understanding of the wisdom of the horse and how that brings us home to ourselves. Simultaneously, she goes into speaking about the concept of borderlands, personalities, it's a psychological term. I'm not familiar with the language, but I'm familiar with the principle of those beings, being human or horses or whatever that are really riding the edge of the dimensions.
Those beings that are here to help people in our evolution towards our next levels. Basically reading that book was giving me new language for something that I'm understanding as to what we're participating in these conversations really to me. So that was part of it. I think we could start with that.
Kerri:
I love what you just said, having language to be in a conversation. Honestly, there are so many people on the planet whose hearts can feel like there's something else. There's a different way, but they don't know how to talk about it. They don't know how to point to it. They don't know how to relate, how to have their mind relate to their heart to be able to maybe ask for what they need.
I think that's a really big gap that's been there in the horse world. So many people are like, well, I don't like this, but really there aren't many other options. This community is absolutely sharing and offering different ways to talk about all of this. Gray, I am super curious because you work hands-on with the horses and you do training things, but your heart is absolutely evolutionary. Would you be open to sharing a little where this phrase lands for you and expound in any way you want and take it anywhere you want?
Gray:
I certainly would be happy to. You'll have to probably stop me at some point. It's a topic that's very dear to me for several reasons. I'm just going to get right out and be vulnerable. I was just born in a body that's fairly unique that falls outside of some traditional boxes. And it's interesting, this idea that we can learn how to be ourselves through horses. I found that growing up in Texas was, I felt a lot of expectation to be ways that didn't really fit for me.
And I think we can all probably identify with that on some level, but it was really extraordinary for me to be with the horses and realize that they saw me outside of an expectation of how they thought I should be or how people should be or how girls should be or how human brains should function. I think that, again, maybe some of us resonate with that.
But to me, what that allowed me to grow up knowing is that there's a whole world that's available that we can create that is not bound by expectations or by sort of imposed rules.That those boxes people are trying to fit in don't actually exist. It didn't feel like a privilege at the time, but I do think in some ways it was a real privilege to just be born right from the start saying, like, there isn't a box for me, so I guess I get to make this up on my own.
And the horses were right there with me saying, yeah, we don't really care. We know there's no box. That's a real human concept. So the horses already knew that. And that has allowed me to just be really, to sort of grow myself and center myself around the possibility that we can create something that will be meaningful and authentic for us as people, as people working
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with horses, as ourselves.
Kerri:
I love that. And it makes me, my mind goes, I wonder if we're at a point where we can take the word possibility, which is amazing and infinite, and actually start talking about probability, right? Because once you recognize there's no boxes, well, then it's pretty likely you're going to create something different, right? There's a high probability that when we feel our own hearts, that we're going to create something new and heartful.
Gray:
Yeah. And so I do think it is a fairly prevalent human desire to have rules, to go, man, if I just know the rules of how to train a horse, I can be good. You know, I can do the rules right, and then I'll be good, right? So I can understand why people get attached to programs that present themselves as very sort of objective. Like these are the steps, you do A, and then you do B, and then you do C. But over and over again, we meet horses that go, I didn't read that book, or I didn't do that online course, or whatever. You're going to have to make something else up.
And I think that's such a gift to learn how to be present with them in that, like you said, probability, that there's something else in here. And a new way of being human kind of, I think, comes from that.
Kerri:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So Chris, listening to Gray, this makes me think about you and everything you have created, that seems like you took exactly what Gray is talking about and ran with it.
Chris:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Thank you so much, Gray and Kerri, for introducing that. And just to add on to what you said, Gray, in order for us to look at possibility and probability, then we need to have a sense of play and exploration and curiosity instilled in us. And like you say, the systems and the steps and do this, do that, it squashes that. But we've grown up with that, right? We've all had to attend school or had parents that did or whatever. So that's our programming that we already have.
But yet, there are no boxes and there is so much happening with inside ourselves. There's so much going on that is not acceptable. And so that's where the gap is. It's in the horse world and it's everywhere. For example, people, and this sounds really fundamental, but a lot of people don't know how to get ready to do certain things. How do you get ready to use energy and intention to move with your horse? Or how do you get ready to take a thought to an action? You can have thoughts, but how do you transition from that thought to actually making an action and an action that means something?
Or one more, I guess, let's see. How do you get ready to use energy and intention to move energy? People say, oh, it's all energy. But how do you do that? And how do you as a person get ready to do that? And our horses, they rely on that because that's how they function. That's how they do their day-to-day interactions with other herds, whether it's two horses or a large herd situation. They have those skills down pat. And so this is where I wrote a book about it, right? It's going to be published at the end of January.
But I find that this is the gap that Kerri was referring to. And as far as your comments go, Gray, yeah, I too myself grew up expecting to be in a box that I didn't fill. And so that's where a lot of this information has come from. It's actually a gift. The fact that I didn't fit into the boxes that I was supposed to was a gift to me that I can now bring to others.
Gray:
Yeah, it's beautiful. If I can just add a little piece. I wonder if it's not that we don't know how, it's that we forgot. I do think that it is something that lives in us somewhere. That's why when we're with the horses, it's like, oh, there it is. There's the part of myself that I sort of forgot. They help us regain that. But then it can be a skill to really bring awareness to and develop.
Chris:
Yeah, you're exactly right. We were born with this level of awareness. We came into the world with this heightened level of awareness. The horses have it all the time. But day to day as life goes on, that awareness gets whittled away. And we almost sever the relationship with that attunement and awareness, not knowingly even. It's there. We just need to pull it out again.
Kerri:
I think that severing began hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, just with humans educating each other in a particular way, prioritizing bigger, better, faster, more, or having, owning over sharing in harmony and providing. Owning and providing are two totally different things. In one of the projects that I've been working on, there's a concept that I'm loving every time I talk about it. That is, what if we look at our intuitive self, our energetic presence, our energetic knowing and knowledge, as restoring an ancient language?
Because it is something that is often familiar to all of us, yet we struggle to grasp it. Most people struggle to grasp it. That's why we're teaching each other. That's why the horses show up, and the elephants, and the dolphins, and the whales. They're all standing there going, it's right here. We can offer each other words, but it's all pointing in the direction of this ancient language that does not require words, but functions in total clarity. It's near and dear.
Obviously, that's what my whole life is about. Jillian, where's all this landing for you? Because I know you teach linear things, but you do it to help people find this place within themselves. At least that's my perception of your walk on the planet.
Jillian:
It's been an interesting dance. Anymore, it's hard to put words to it because I feel like I experience shapes now in how I live my life. There's a few things that come to mind. One, my teacher, Mark Russell, who passed away, always said, Jillian, we've only just begun to learn what it is that the Great Horse Nation has to teach us. But it's not just horses, it's anything in life. That is possibly something as simple and difficult as showing up as your authentic self, or
rediscovering your authentic self without fear, and embracing your authentic self, and bringing yourself to the equation with any living being from that space.
But bringing it back to shape, like the Enzo or the circle. Lately, I've been having a lot of reflections on my own horsemanship journey. Growing up as an only child who was off the charts ADD, very neurodivergent, very untethered to anything but the horses, because my parents were absent, and I just lived on this farm. I had such joyfulness, and I was not bound by anything linear. I wasn't bound by a how-to formula.
All my time with my horses was just absolutely joyful. If I wanted to go do something with my horse, I didn't think about how I was going to go do something with my horse. We just went together, with eunice.There was no thought process to it. Then as you say, Kerri, we become educated, and we're taught how to think. Then we start to prescribe to dogmas, and all these things that actually put us in boxes. Right, Gray? They put us in boxes.
Even now when I read about ADD, I still feel like I'm being put in a box to try to explain why I might perceive the world in a particular kind of way or experience the world. But once I started to learn about dogma, and I started to learn about technique, then the next 15 or 20 years of my horsemanship journey became about technique. I'm not saying that's wrong. It was more linear. However, every horse is different. Every situation is different. That's where you have a Feldenkrais perspective, which is if you only have one way of doing something that's very limited.
But I have found now as I'm moving into my 50s that we also make horses slaves to technique. I feel like I'm that Enzo or that circle that I'm coming back around now, where I had that unencumbered knowing and authenticity with horses. Then I became shaped by technique and dogma. Now I'm moving out of that again, and into what I would maybe refer to more as artistic horsemanship.
Where my horses aren't a slave to what I'm asking them to do, but it becomes about the conversation. It becomes about just being 100% present in the moment. Then it really does become that dance that so many of us know as a part of almost our birthright. That dance can become such a beautiful thing. In that, you let go of perfectionism. When you let go of perfectionism, you are in perfection. It's been really fun to come full circle.
Not that I've completed the circle, but maybe I'm starting on that next evolution of the circle. It has been such a joyful process for me to be in that space. We use different words now today to maybe explain these types of things, but this isn't a new knowing. Think about the classics in horsemanship. Young men were sent to work with horses not to become horse trainers, but to develop their values, to develop their ethics, to develop their character through what was reflected to them through the work with these incredibly sentient beings.
Again, it's another evolution in another generation, in another era, but there is this thread of truth throughout it all that I think we all have an ability to tap into. I thank myself that sometimes I didn't know some of the things that I know now when I was 20. I used to say, I wish I would have known this when I was 20, but no, I don't because I wouldn't have had the insight or the maturity to work with it. To bring it full circle, yes, you teach technique, but technique is temporary.
Yes, there might be a moment of rote learning, and then you let that fall away into a feeling. That's where I've discovered energy. Then the words of my teacher comes back, which is, it's not about making horses do anything. It's about allowing horses in just the shaping of energy. That comes in all different kinds of mediums and dance, Chris, right? It becomes a beautiful, mystical, lovely dance.
Kerri:
Oh, it's so gorgeous. I love how you reference the thing that is that we all find what feels true in all of that. Then we can call that our authentic self. Regardless of what energy spectrum or level or where we are on that evolutionary spiral, we each have this capacity to sense true. Another little set of words I use is the absence of conflict within myself that opens the way for wisdom or clarity or the next possibility or stepping into the next probability. It's coming back to me, speaking to that ancient lost language that can only come back alive when each of us finds that feeling of true within ourselves.
Will, I'm curious to hear from you now, because Will doesn't do hands-on horses, yet he enjoys a depth of connection. Where is all this landing in your world, my friend?
Will:
My goodness, you're speaking all the same words, just phrased maybe just slightly differently. I like, Chris, how you said this ancient language. When you started speaking about that, what I was envisioning is, yeah, we went from a set of beings, humans, that had no box, and that's where we thrived. Then as we matured or as we grew in our humanness and society set in, that's where the box was built, not only around as a structure, but for our own selves, we start to create our own boxes. We're a box within a box within a box.
We get more sheltered and more sheltered, but now we're getting to a point where those boxes are being stripped away and we're coming back. It's that whole circle aspect. We're coming back to that place where the ancient language and the ancient understandings and the trueness of ourselves are actually coming out. As with all the channelings I've done and all the work that I do, the one place that really is in my heart is when I'm connected to a horse. There's a majesty to it. There's an energy presence to it that just transcends eons.
There's a presence, and that's the best way to say it. I've spent not a lot of time around horses, but the time that I do spend around them physically, that presence that you speak of, that knowing, they see you, they know you before you even step foot in
the ring. They've got you dialed in and they strip you away. Right now, I'm going through some struggles. There's a lot of stuff going on, and I'm thinking to myself, I need to find a horse. I need to find a horse in my life because I need to find that vulnerable aspect of myself.
I need to have somebody see me and allow me to be stripped away to nothingness and find myself in that. I think it is truly the horse that can do that. Because,I forget where we were again, this was several years ago, there was a particular horse I was standing next to, and we just locked eyes. At that moment, my whole body, I didn't feel like I was in my body. I just felt like I just dissolved into the ether, but yet here I am standing next to this majestic beast that just knows.
That was well before I started channeling horses, and now when I get to step into that space with them, and that's the way with a cat or a dog, they come in and we have fun, but I'm stepping into their space. And yes, you're speaking all the same words. I may not be having hands on with horses and doing all the work in the same way that you guys are doing it, but you all understand them at the same level, and that's what's amazing. What they can bring to humanity, humans, they are the great wisdom that we need right now.
How do we bring that forward? I think the bigger question is, how do we bring their wisdom out for others to experience, whether that is in presence or even in word? They have a story to tell, and it's a really interesting time right now. We just worked with a horse. I'll tell you a little funny story. We just worked with a horse. Willow was the name, and it's the second time I've worked with this horse through channeling.
When he came in here into our tree house, energetically, when I connected to him, he was focused off into this corner over here, and this is where the portal is, where they come in, energetic portal where they come in when I connect to them. He focused there for quite a bit, and he's like, there's somebody else here. Somebody else is with us.
And we have an energetic being that we affectionately call Echo. I'll say Echo is a little bit of a ‘troll’ being, but he's the one that just monitors the property, walks around energetically. A number of people have seen him energetically, but Willow could not take his eyes off of that corner and was like, there's somebody here. We had a little conversation between the two of them. It's interesting while in a trance with them, they see more than what's actually in the room. It's just a beautiful, beautiful experience. I'm so blessed to be part of a group like this that speaks all the same words.
Kerri:
Thank you. Thank you so much, Will. You know, you're prompting me to see if we want to play a little with bringing words and ideas and how do we create a space for people to recognize this is available. There's different levels of connection available, even if they are in a conventional horse town? I take my riding lessons and I only see a horse once a week, or I ride my horse for an hour a day and that's it because they're boarded. But my trainer doesn't understand this, so I have to go with my trainer, otherwise there's no riding.
Or even people that you know, that are on the journey a little bit more deeply and have a few horses with them, like maybe they have three or four horses at home and find it difficult to find that depth of space with their horses.For me, it's just, it's been proven over and over by the horses that they will meet us at whatever level of clarity and awareness and energetic and consciousness we are willing to engage.
But how do we make that conversation relevant in a world where people don't necessarily know how or want to live outside their boxes? Because it's happening whether they think it is or not. How do we make this conversation relevant, even in the existence of boxes?
Will:
Well, I think what you're doing right here is the first step in that. It is making it, and what we've been told with all the work that we've been doing right from the beginning, is to make it mainstream. Not to keep it hidden away, not to make it woo-woo, but to make it mainstream. Just talk about it like we're doing, talking about it as experiential beings having this happening all the time.
And for those that, you know, even like for many of my clients, they're like, well, I don't know how to do this or do that. Well, there really isn't an instruction manual, but it's trusting here, right? It's trusting in your heart. When you feel that little niggle, where you feel that little vibration, where you feel that little twist in you that just wasn't there before, don't just move on and keep doing something.
Stop and just ask yourself, okay, what was that? What am I supposed to be connecting to? Who's here? What's here? You know, and not to have any fear in it, and just, and I think, I forgot who said it, but it's that, it's like play, right? You know, it's like that childlike play, and it comes through in many sessions for many people is don't forget to be that little child like you were when you got that little toy, and you just explored it, and you just giggled with it. That's how life should be. I mean, 56 years old, and there's things that still make me, you know, childlike and giggle and right, just have fun.
And we forget how to do that because we're in a box, and we have to remember to open the lid and pop our head out like the jack in the box and go, we're here and just have fun. And that's the start, but it's having conversations like this to really just make it mainstream and not make it, you know, woo-woo or, you know, anything else, so.
Kerri:
Well, Leanne, you live with a small herd. You live with land. You connect with all the beings on your property or the land, the property you live on. And I know you do share about your experience to some extent, but what's the journey been like for you to just, like, surrender deeper into that
curiosity of what does life look like
Leanne:
That is where I'm at actually right now so much, Kerri. And it's about exactly what Will said. Just start modeling it out loud. Just start sharing it like it's normal, right? And I've had this experience with my brother, a completely different scenario, but he's 10 years older than I am, and he's very wise, and it's like a drip feed. So, he had been talking about something, you know, long, long prior to my experience, and all of a sudden, one day, something happened, and then his words came back into my head, and I was like, oh, and it validated what I had just experienced, and it's the same.
Even if we're sharing and aren't liking it because this is out of their realm of understanding, so to speak, they read it, and it's a drip feed. And it starts to awaken their remembrance, basically, and so my, and it's, but it's, it takes courage because so many people, I don't know why it needs to take courage, but it does, and so that's actually on my radar, my to-do right now is to start sharing more. And so I just, and, that's where I am. And I'm glad you brought it up because I think that is the thing we just need to talk about it like it's normal.
Kerri:
Yeah, because it kind of is. It might not be familiar, then there's a big difference between familiar and normal, right? Gray, where does the courage come from
Gray:
It reminded me of sometimes, I'm sort of like, I just don't have the good sense to not try sometimes. It hasn't always worked out great. (chuckling). I mean, I think I have an awesome eight-year-old human child. We talk a lot about how you don't, you're not really being brave if you don't have any fear. You're just being confident, and that's easy, you know? Being brave. I think, has to lean into the vulnerability of opening to something and stepping into it, and I think this is actually, Jillian, I've been thinking a lot about what you were talking about shaping. And I don't exactly know how to formulate the question yet.
But it's something about, I'll just be honest, like my stuff, when the word linear came up, I was sort of like, because I've had the opportunity to work with Jillian, and that's not how I would describe the work. But I think especially for those of us who are working with either, as horse trainers or working with horses that really need some support in order to feel better, there's horses that I can be out in the round pen, and let's play, and let's just bring this energy, and we move together, because there's trust that's already in there.
But there's also horses that if I step in the round pen, and I say, let's play, they're going, I wish you would walk away from me. I'd feel a lot better if you weren't here, just because of their past experiences with people, maybe. So, I think it's like, how do we balance this shaping, this structure? Like, Kerri, I know you've had the opportunity to do the Aibado out here in Colorado with Mark Rashid. So that's a practice that my mentor, Mark Rashid, developed that we talk a lot about softness with structure.
So, if you have softness without structure, you're just kind of floppy. And if you have structure without softness, that's like Jillian, what you were talking about with being slave to technique, we've lost the life in the shape. So,I think that my question is something about how do we find this balance of shaping all the possibilities into a partnership into whatever? If it's a canter transition, or if it's just standing quietly in the herd together, if we just say, everything is possible, which is kind of my tendency.
It's interesting, Jillian, also, you brought up being sort of like, wildly undiagnosed ADHD, is like, the word discipline came up so much growing up. And I have a little bit of a negative connotation, that I don't have the discipline, right? It's interesting that we call our horsemanship practices sometimes our disciplines. But I think if we're being very generous about that word, what it is, is how do we shape all the possibilities? And we don't just leave a horse in the round pen going, I actually need some help here, but going, let's play.
And we don't say like, you have to do a canter transition right now, that doesn't help, right? So yeah, how do we find that balance of softness and structure? Or how do we look for what's possible while still shaping it towards something that is maybe more what we're looking for?
Kerri:
Using the word linear, when I was talking about Jillian earlier, I think, Jillian, you blend linear and nonlinear so beautifully, because you do talk about anatomy, and you help people recognize this, along with this does that. And there's an enormous beauty in weaving the linear with the nonlinear. And I've struggled against this my whole life, because my awareness has just always been seeing the things that present everything that wants to happen and how it works, without ever consulting the shoulds and shouldn'ts and how-tos. It's obvious, well, if you just go here, and you say that, this is going to happen, if you put your hand here, the horse is going to understand, because I could feel all of it. And so linear always has been itchy for me forever as well, Gray?
Gray: It's not a bad word. It's just...I brace.
Kerri:
No, there are no bad words (chuckling). I totally get it. But I think that is part of the journey of integrating this, a different way of being human that the horses invite us into all the time is to get curious, especially when the brace hits, right? To get curious, where am I maintaining myself in a box? And once I'm curious, what changes? Does the feeling change when I get curious? And Jillian too, when I watch you teach, it's just so relaxing. It makes me smile, because the way you teach is the way I taught myself when I didn't have any teachers. It was the same approach just within myself. And here you are bringing that out to work with other people. So will you talk a little bit about what brought you to
start teaching with bones and teaching about anatomy and structure in that light? What was the inspiration? What is it creating in you to do that?
Jillian:
Chris, you and I have a commonality here, and I'll come back around to it. But I think first coming back to this idea of linear, that there are parts of this journey that might be linear, but they're just a part, right? It's just one slice of a pie.So like, if I'm going to teach footfall for the sake of teaching footfall, so somebody can feel it, it might be linear. But once they feel it, it is no longer linear. Because in the ‘feel’ is where you create and you can become curious, but so many people come to me ashamed, “I've been trying to learn this for years, and I just don't get it”.
Well, it's like anything, you take a larger idea or conceptualization, you chunk it down. It's like monkey bread, you take a little piece of monkey bread off and you eat it, right? It's like a part of a bigger thing, but you chunk it down, and then you reassemble it. And then something grander comes into play. Or like Moshe Feldenkrais used to say, if you only have one way of doing something, it's very primitive. If you have two ways of doing something, it's still a little primitive. But if you have three ways of doing the same thing, suddenly you realize you have endless possibilities.
But sometimes you just have to have a little guide to get there. So I think blending is really the right word. We are working with a mechanical system, but a mechanical system doesn't vary far away from art. Math, sacred geometry and the mathematical equations of the universe are the primary basis of Leonardo da Vinci. And so, again, we're trying to put things in boxes. And there's just no boxes, they intertwine and intermix. And in that you can become curious and you start to discover endless possibilities, right?
So when I started to teach functional anatomy, it's because I had a worldview about how horses should be: Managed. Handled. Dominated. Subjugated. So I could compete in a discipline and win money and titles and ooh all about me, right? And then the universe comes around and decks me and says, hey, wow, you break your two legs in your back and think about things. And then it was that epiphany, which was a huge gift, which was like, you know, you don't really know anything about these animals at all. So I had to start somewhere.
And then that's when I met Peggy Cummings. And Peggy Cummings was talking to me about how you move in serpentines. How you use your body, how you energetically have two sentient beings murmuring. And if you could do that, you could physically develop their body as well. And so I said, how, why? That sent me to learning about functional anatomy. But again, it's just one piece of the pie, but it's an important piece of the pie. So I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? It's like, I want to know why something might work.
And it's also perfectly okay if I don't know how it
works. And then sister Marianne Zolman whispers in my ear and says, “sometimes Jillian, you just have to bow before the mystery” and that's been an incredible guiding principle for me. Now I think with the advent of social media and COVID and people getting online, we've become very focused on learning technique. And we've been very focused on learning anatomy.
But nothing replaces the dance that you actually have with the being. And it's not just horses. If you really want to understand horses or humans or anything, you have to study all creatures in the natural world. And you look beyond that and suddenly we start to realize how much more we are alike than we are different.
Horses have seven cervical vertebrae. I have seven cervical vertebrae. I have two eyes. Horses have two eyes. I have four legs. They have four legs. We're not that different. They just might communicate or think without our verbal language. And so there's just so much blending and intertwining. I just don't see how it ever can ever truly be ferreted apart, if that makes sense.
Kerri:
It makes perfect sense to me. Yes. One of the things I see when people do start getting curious and seeing how much we do have in common and they really want to learn and find the feeling, find that sense of ‘us-ness’. It's so simple that it's often missed that one of the aspects of nature we get to discover or rediscover is our own nature. The aspect of ‘ourself’ that has never been disconnected. The more we live above our eyebrows, it's clear to see all the disconnects. But below our eyebrows, the connection is what animates us.
And when we can guide each other to that awareness and then get curious about that awareness, I think it doesn't really matter what discipline we're in, what we're doing, as long as we are doing. Like you said, we can sit and learn all day long and type about it all day long. But until you are out and moving in the world and interacting and allowing yourself to be reached and touched energetically with concepts and thoughts, with interactions, how else can we start to see and recognize our authentic self? How else does that authentic self be welcomed forward if we don't create any space for it to be seen by the most important eyes, which is our own?
Jillian:
I think that's one of the things, Chris, I've so always admired about you as a dancer and an artist of movement is how beautifully you bridge that with your work with horses. And you've always had that joyful sense of play. And I think that brings about real greatness. Like when we had Manolo at 72 years old, he didn't give one ounce of, he had no concern whatsoever about dogma. I should sit this way. I should look this way. My hand should be here. He just rode with pure joy. And then you might have somebody, oh, he's kind of crooked here. I don't judge a rider by how they look on the horse. I look, I judge, you know, that whole word judge. What does it look like in their togetherness? And it was joyful. There
was laughter. There was motion. It was palatable if you watched it.
And just that without words, he taught me such a valuable lesson, which brought me to that whole Enzo of the circle. Like, yeah, we can really become a slave to these things. But sometimes that might just also be a part of our process.
Chris:
Thank you, Jillian. Yeah, so much bouncing around here. I just wanted to go back. And this is all related. So I'm not really going back to the shaping and how I see it. I see it differently now. I know I used to see it the way we're talking about here, which is the pieces that we break it apart, and then we put it together. I see it the other way. Now I see it as the whole, and that's how I teach. So if we see it as a whole at the beginning, and we learn how to feel it as a whole, as the beginning, and it, I mean interactions, engagement with another being, which involves motion, which involves movement, which involves joy, and all these things we've talked about. When we start there, that's when we can really embody something.
So it's not that we view it, I see it not that we view it that we're shaping something. It's that we're embodying it, that then the horse can pick up, that then, and murmur is a word that's going around too. They like to do that. That's what they do. That's how they live. But if we don't know, or we can't remember, or we just haven't experienced how to embody, then that's a missing link. So that's the way I view it. And to talk about the softness and the structure, yes, we need both. We need to have integrity within our bodies, strength, coordination, those kinds of things.
But we also need to find out how to access the rhythm and the bouncing atoms and the cells that are bouncing. And when we're bracing, and when our horses are bracing, when we're not bracing, even if it's a brace to a word, like we've experienced in this call, right? A certain word makes us brace. What's happening within your body? What's in the whole body? What's happening, right? It's seen as a whole, it's felt as a whole, including emotions, including intuition, including energy, including intention, all of those things. So that's where I like to sort of flip it on its head as to how we see things.
Will:
I just want to jump in just right quick. I picked up on, and I may misphrase it, but this nexus between technique and feeling, I think that is so important. No matter what we do in our life, whether we're horsemen or whether we're energy workers, or whether we're just a businessman or a school teacher, you have to learn the technique first. But to get to greatness, or to achieve, or to get to those points where you really get into the flow. It's that feeling, it's the nexus between knowing the technique and the feeling. And many people don't ever get to that feeling point. They stay stuck in the technique because they may have felt that feeling, but were afraid to really dive into it. Because they didn't understand it. It came across as something that was outside of their experience.
And I'll share from my own experience with that. Retired military, 30 years, everything had a structure. Everything had a technique. There was no area for feeling. Even though I was a diesel mechanic, and I was very good at what I did because I let my intuitive self guide me during that. But everything else was strict by the book technique. It had to be done that way. Well, then when I started practicing Reiki, I was stuck with the hands had to go here, here, and here, nowhere else. And you couldn't do anything else. But yet I was, as soon as I would put my hands on somebody, it was like I just got plugged in and all this stuff started coming in.
And I told my Reiki master about it. And my Reiki master was like, well, that's not Reiki. Stop doing that. I'm like, I can't. I can't. And so, you know, the journey changed at that point, another Reiki master and I stepped back and I said, no, this is my authentic self. This is what I'm doing. This technique is what is bringing me to this point. So now I have to honor that. And it was uncomfortable stepping out of that structured life that I was in for so long to just free flow. And when you step into that, that is where creativity is. That's where play is. That's where expansiveness is.
And I think whether you're working with a horse or whether you're working with another human, when you can understand the difference between that and work in that zone, and then teaching that nexus, having somebody understand that point between, okay, you've got all the technique down, that's great. But now let's ‘feel’ into it. What is your heart leading you to? What is your body leading you to? What is your aura leading you to? And that's really what we're kind of all talking about here is that's the beauty in it. That's where it really connects. And you mirror, you mirror the horse, the horse mirrors you, and you have this beautiful relationship with one another.
Jillian:
That was beautifully said. If I had that little bubble around my head, it would say “ nailed it”. Yeah, that was great. Thank you. Thank you.
Chris:
And we can have that connection between technique and feeling and flow, right? From the beginning. We don't, as you talk about your experience as a mechanic or whatever, because that's the way it was taught, doesn't need to be taught that way. We can experience flow, even if we have a tiny hint of technique. We don't need to focus on technique. Okay. Now go and be creative with it. Now find the connection between or the nexus between technique and feeling. We are feeling bodies and what happens within our bodies comes from feelings and emotions and sensations, that's the origin.
So when we try to sever or isolate that in our teachings, then to bring it all back is difficult. I mean, I was a dancer and was taught that the same way. We have to have technique and you have to have very precision technique. And yes, it's all, it's all physics, it's all
mechanics. But I also had some very special teachers that allowed the creativity to come in there. I didn't just study technique, right?
Yes, you have to have technique to be injury-free or less injury and to be aesthetically pleasing. That's a belief system, but whatever. But you do have to have the technique there, but you can have the feeling there, depending on your teacher, depending on how you do it, depending on who your clinician is or your guru is. That's where we need to really focus on, on our discernment.
Jillian:
I think that's really, really well said, Chris, and, and there's so many golden truths in that. And you brought up a word that, you know, a teacher, right? We all are teachers in one way or another. And with that, we have to have empathy also to try to understand how everybody learns. And try to facilitate them also. How are they going to filter the information that we're presenting through their context of their own experience as well. So being a teacher is really quite an honor and being a teacher really always makes me have to strive to think through things and to get creative in my own teaching technique about how to parlay these concepts to different minded people or feeling people.
Gray:
Because, I'm sure there is that idea of how does each person learn? I know that when I first started doing clinics and there'd be people, I'd say, well, ‘just feel it’. And they'd be like, ‘that is so far from my skill set’, right? That it almost sets them back because now they feel like they're doing something wrong. But I just love the idea. I think that sometimes what, thank you so much, Chris, for bringing up this idea that it's a whole first, because I think now we're not having to gather the component parts and put them together. Okay. It's here. What is it? What is it that's here, right?
And sometimes we do have to use maybe more linear language. Maybe more, draw attention to a very specific movement or technique or something. Because, you know, we don't want to lose a person or a horse by saying, ‘this is the best way’ because that's another box, right? But I do think it's valuing also.
I joke a lot about the lost art of inefficiency. Because it can be much slower to say, we're just going to stay with this feeling so that your body can learn it instead of going, well we're six weeks in and so here's the difference between your right and your left-lead canter, here's the cues. It's really just stay with embodying the connection between. Now we're not component parts, me and my horse. This is a whole. And now we're addressing these aspects of the whole, rather than pulling out or gluing together different component parts. I just, I really, I appreciate that. It becomes less overwhelming to me then. Rather than saying, oh, I see everything at once. It's like, oh, it's all here. It's one thing. And then get curious about what's in there.
Chris:
Yeah. That's really well said, Gray. I love the words you chose to express that. That's going to be very helpful to me.
Gray: Thank you. I'm going to have to chew on that for a while.
Chris: It does take a lot of chewing.
Kerri:
There is a word that keeps coming to my mind when we're talking about, yes, of course, technique, because there's the doing and the physics and the things and technique helps our mind relate to what is happening in front of us. Because the mind is the linear instrument, right? And then the body is what is communicating with the subtle energy of the whole that's going on. And so we will use the technique and like Will and Chris, all of us are saying, we use the technique till we recognize the space to be creative. And in that creativity is when we can transcend the technique, when we can transcend that which has existed previously.
And we have a word for that, that a lot of people shy away from, but the truth is, that is genius! That is our unique genius. That is the creativity that each of us only can uniquely bring to a situation. And whether it is, oh, the genius to create the world's fanciest company, or a genius that says, well, my teacher said to use my leg here, but instead I'm going to open my hip because I can feel that from my horse. The horse suddenly is like, oh, there you are. That's a moment of genius.
I think it's so worth it to recognize that we all have that. Factory installed. But the walk is helping each other recognize it. And because we each learn differently, you know, like Ram Dass famously said, “we are all just walking each other home”. And that brilliance of that moment of genius, what if that is our home? That's the playfulness, the innocence, the beauty of being alive and horses.
I mean, have you guys ever met horses? They're incredible. And they just, they touch that part of us effortlessly when we make ourselves available for it? We've got about five minutes left in our hour here, unfortunately. But how would we like to close our conversation today?
Gray: Was that not the closing? That was beautiful!
Group: Agreeing and chuckling in love
Gray: Yeah. The horse is just walking us home.
Will: How do you top that, right?
Chris: That was beautiful, Kerri.
Kerri: Shucks, thanks. Oh, man, what a beautiful conversation you guys. Thank you. Your brilliance just is so nourishing.
Jillian:
I mean, I will be floating around for days now, just chewing on our beautiful conversation and letting it sink in. And it will help me continue to grow. That's what it's about.
Will: So much said right there. Absolutely.
Leanne:
Thank you, Kerri, for making this, these conversations available. I mean, this was your brainchild and a fruit of your life's work. And I'm very grateful to be a part of it.
Gray:
Thank you for Leanne, to Leanne for the jumping off point, too. There was a very rich conversation that came out of that.