Landy Peek (00:33)
have you ever experienced when someone, perhaps even you, blows up at something that feels so trivial and it's like, my gosh, where'd that come from? Perhaps it's a kiddo coming home from school and you just say, can you hang your backpack up instead of throwing it on the floor? And they're exploding. It's a volcano. Or perhaps it's you.
And you are walking in the door at home and you're trying to cook dinner and somebody asks you where the socks are and it's like, and it's done. And you're like, why? Why did I explode on something so little?
Well, I've learned as I've been training our wild Mustang Denny and through Warwick Schiller's work, who is an incredible horseman that has everything to do with 13 rabbits. Welcome back to the Landy Peak podcast. I'm your friend and host Landy Peak, and today I am sharing a little bit of the psychology behind the horse training.
That I am doing and learning. Because as I've really immersed myself in this world, I'm seeing how it really overlaps into our day-to-day human interactions that are blindsiding us and we can't figure out why. So Warwick Schiller is an incredible horseman.
And he does a lot of training around working with horses and he has a different approach than most. His is very much relational base and attunement based, which means that we're building a relationship with the horse. The horse is our partner in the interaction. It's not just somebody that needs to fall in line and be obedient in what we're asking them to do. And as and
Really tuning in that attunement piece to what's going on with their systems. And as I have learned from him, I'm seeing so much overlap into how I parent and my relationships and how I am showing up in the world. And so I really wanted to share because there's such big ahas that I think are gonna really change your life. So
Attunement is when someone feels heard, seen, felt, and got. So what that means, and think about in your own life, when, if ever, was there a moment in time where you truly felt someone was attuned to you? Somebody really saw you, really heard you.
Really felt and you felt like they got you. So your feelings were felt and you were gotten. Like truly understood. It doesn't happen, I think, as often as we are craving. And I think it is one of the big missing pieces in a lot of relationships, especially partner relationships that are fall apart. And it's because we're craving the attunement.
We want to be seen, heard, felt, and fully gotten. And so if we think about that in our relationships with our kiddos, with our partners, right? I think as women and moms, a lot of times we are attuning to other people, but we often don't have the experience of other people attuning to us. So as I've worked with Denny, I really
Learned that when I am in that paddock with her, there are four beings that I need to attune to. And oftentimes when we're working with humans, when we're working with other people or in groups, we forget that there are all of these beings that we need to attune to. So in our paddock, I need to attune to Denny, the horse.
I need to attune to my daughter. I need to attune to my son because 99% of the time they are out there with me and working with me. And I need to attune to myself. Where am I? So one of Warwick's big principles is that you work with the horse that you have today. So what that means is that you are working with the horse who is showing up.
What you got accomplished yesterday or the day before. But actually, the horse that is showing up. So just because I got a halter on Denny yesterday does not mean it's going to be easy to get a halter on her today. Just because my kiddos in the morning, when I'm saying, okay, get ready, and I can say you have 15 minutes, I need you to brush your teeth, brush your hair, get your clothes on, and put your shoes on. And yesterday.
They're like, great mom did it without anything. And today, when I said it, it's a complete meltdown, and we have a kid laying on the floor. That is because I wasn't working with the kid or the horse that I have today. And what that really means is that every single day we have different levels of stressors. We have different amounts of sleep, food.
Like how tired are they? How hungry are they? How stressed out are they? How distracted are they? What is going on in their systems? And relationally, what has gone on between us? Have I been extra snappy? Have I been a little short? Have I been distracted? And I really, really see and understand this in a really different way going through perimenopause. Because the me that shows up every single day is.
Different. Because if you tell me maybe some constructive criticism at the mid to beginning of my cycle, I'm gonna say, hey, great, thanks for the feedback. But if you tell me that same constructive feedback right before my period, I'm gonna be crying because I let you down and you hurt my feelings. You said the exact same thing. You did the exact same thing.
I was a different human that day. So when we're going in and we're working with the different, working with the horse that you have today, working with the kid that you have today, working with the you that you have today, it shifts how we are seeing things. So instead of coming in with a set agenda and being railroaded because that can't happen, we are seeing a bigger picture.
And so as we work with the horse that we have today, the expectations shift. Because just because it was easy yesterday, I'm not walking in expecting it to be easy today. I'm gonna tune in and see what's going on.
Are we doing our training session right before dinner and she's hungry? I don't know what's gone on in the rest of her day. Do we have extra distractions?
Really tuning in and not having the expectation sets everyone up for success and no one up for failure. But we don't do this in our own lives, right? We expect ourselves to show up in the exact same way every single day of our cycle. When you and I know that's not the case. Sometimes in our cycle we have more energy, sometimes we're more sensitive, sometimes we're more emotional. Right? If we allow our own selves to
Work with the person that you are today and give yourself the grace to be like, I just don't have that in me today. Even though I did it for the last three days, today it's not there. So as we're working with that relationship, right? so Warwick Schiller.
Talks about relationship before horsemanship. So building that relationship before we're asking tasks, as well as being working with the horse you have today and being attuned. And so as I am coming in and I'm listening to his work, I am taking his course, I'm reading his book, read his book. it's phenomenal work. And he uses a lot from human psychology into the horse world, which is so cool. So we're looking at
Attunement, we're looking at relationship, we're looking at nervous system, and horses have the mammalian nervous system, so they go into fight, flight, or freeze, just like humans. And there's so many horses, and I believe especially kiddos, who go into a freeze state because they have no other option. We're forced to do something, so we can't get away from it, and you shut down. Now I saw this really.
really big with women who experience birth trauma because you can't run from birth. You can't fight birth. The only way if you're gonna get out of that situation is to shut down or disassociate.
And I see that a lot in horses and in humans.
And so
One of the things as I've worked with this week and noticing that stresses were a little higher and there were a couple of days when I ended up working alone with Denny. And typically it has been me, my son Isaac, and my daughter Tegan working with her. And Isaac got roped into this because he has to be with us and I didn't have childcare.
so as we're sitting and coming into this, we hit a day where I had an agenda. I needed to go out and work with the horse. And I had two kiddos who it was over 90 degrees, it was hot, it was four or five o'clock in the afternoon. We're done. We're maxed out, we're hungry, we're tired, and
I had the expectations that they're gonna go in and do what we've been doing. And my son's been doing a lot of the videos for Instagram, which is fabulous. And they've both been working with the horse, and my daughter takes turns doing videos, so I'm in the video and I also video. So we've had this system and all of a sudden the system collapsed. And I got grumpy. I got grumpy because I wasn't seeing the kids that I had today, or the me that I had today.
happened to be that time in my cycle where it's a little bit less of a buffer. And so I got grumpy at it. And it's like, you guys, this is what you're supposed to be doing. They didn't have it.
And then I started working with the horse and I video and I set up a tripod and I video our sessions so that I can go back and look at yes, use them for Instagram and Facebook. And I'm going back and watching the videos so I can see how attuned I am to that the horse. What am I doing? Because if I there are things that I do that I'm not aware of, right? We did a training session with the Wild Rose trainers.
And I was working with a different horse than Denny. And as I was lunging her, the trainers like stop stepping back. And I'm like, I'm not stepping back. And she's just like, pay attention. When you send that horse around, as you're sending the horse out on the lunge line, you take a step back. Instead of having the horse me keep my feet where they are and have the
horse go out for me, I do kind of both. I had no idea I was doing it. So as a video, I can go back and watch myself and see like, what am I doing? So it's been a really cool tool to be able to see how I'm working. Now Warwick has a a story and kind of a philosophy around 13 rabbits. So what it is is he shares that in one of his trainings he had a woman that came to him and said
I have a crazy horse. Can you help me? And he's like, okay, tell me what's going on. She's like, we go out on a trail ride and he sees a rabbit and he's like, rabbit, okay. He sees number two rabbit, rabbit, okay. Right. We acknowledge we notice the rabbit, but we don't have a big behavior around it. And she said, he's fine. Until like that 12th rabbit, we're fine. rabbit, okay. On the 13th rabbit, he totally explodes. He's crazy. And what's
Actually happening is that we all have a stress bucket, and we keep adding in the stressors and the stressors and the stressors, and we all have a limit. And that particular horse had a 13 rabbit limit. We're done. And so as I heard this story, and it's the aha moment, as then I'm taking it back to my parenting life and going,
Okay, so when my daughter walks in and I say, Can you put your backpack up or pick up your coat? and she explodes, it's not that she's disrespectful. It's not that she's being a brat. It's that she just hit her 13th rabbit. And I don't know all the little stressors that happened through her day. Just think about you. If you're came home from work and you're cooking dinner and you're trying to help with
This, that, or the other, and your partner comes in and says, Hey, do you know where my and you explode on that? It's not his question. It's as you just hit your threshold of your 13 rabbits. And it was such an aha moment for me as we really leaned into and I started using that in my family. And we had a 13th rabbit. I'm at 12 rabbits.
Everybody knows I'm kinda maxed out. Don't come and ask the next thing.
So as we shift and look at, if we're meeting the person and the horse that we have today, both in ourselves and the people around us, and we're aware that we're all having stresses that are adding up, and we all have a limit, and it's just what actually hits the limit.
Then we get to be more attuned and aware and supporting each one of us and having better reactions and relationships. So Warwick talks about you want to have relationship before horsemanship, which means we have a relationship before we're asking something of them. So how many times do we go to our kids and demand they do this, this, this, and this, and we've barely said hello?
How many times do we have that on us? Where someone comes in and it's like, I want this, this, and this, without even a, hey, how are you today? A tune in. Do you have capacity today? But we expect the tasks to be done. We expect the things to happen. And we forget about the relationship part of it. We forget about attuning and having those attuned to us. We forget about the 13 rabbits.
And so that's where our real upsets come from. And so with Denny this week, I started out. And here we are, and it's like 90 plus degrees and 5 p.m. The sun's beating down on the paddock. My kids are tired and they're hungry and they're done. And while I did honor that they could not be in that paddock working with me, that they needed that space and time.
I grumbled about it. I said, this is not our deal. You're supposed to be doing this, right? Not great parenting, but I was grumpy. And so I allowed them to sit outside the paddock. And they had their water and they had a snack and they played on my phone.
And I went in to work with Denny on my own.
So my energy coming in, and horses are incredible mirrors. My energy coming into that paddock wasn't the best. I didn't really reset me before I went on to the task. And one of the keys with the 13 rabbits is to be able to hit a reset button so that they're not continually building up. I did not.
So my kids hit the reset. They're like, I'm maxed out. They're really good at advocating and articulating. I'm maxed out, I can't do this. And my daughter was like, Mom, I'm sorry. I feel guilty. I feel like I should be in there, but I just don't have it in me. What I should have said was the same. But I didn't. Like, I'm working with this. And part of my own internal regulation and therapy is working with horses. I love it. I feel so.
Different. So I knew going in I was grumpy and I was gonna come out a better person. But I had some lessons to learn before then. So as I went in, and we also had somebody else working in the paddock. so we had some different energies, right? Typically, it's me and the kids working with Denny by ourselves. the other person who boards happens to be there, no big deal. I actually really enjoy these people. So
This is great. It's fun to see what other people are doing and how they're working with their horse.
So as I'm watching the video, because I'm videoing a lot of the training sessions, I'm watching the video and I'm watching myself groom Denny.
And she's not haltered. She's free to roam the paddock. Like she can totally move away from me. And I watch as I groom and I groom towards her rump and her ears go back, not in a I'm gonna kick you pins way, but in a like, I'm not loving this way. She didn't move away from me. Rabbit one, right? That I know of. I don't know what the rest of her day was like. But five o'clock, rabbit one. We usually feed at six, probably rabbit two. We're getting on the hungry side.
Dinner's at six for her. And so I groom in the video, I don't even notice her ear changes. It's subtle. How many times in our lives are our kids giving us those subtle signals or our partners or ourselves? And we override that because we've learned Taskmaster first, our own needs second. So I'm not even looking at her. I am just focused on brushing.
So I see the ears in the video. I'm like, okay. Mental note, she didn't love where I was brushing. And I move on. So then I have my agenda we've done the halter, we've done the feet, I want to keep doing those, and I want to try to lead her because that's kind of in my head the next big step. Should I have been doing something new in that moment? Absolutely not.
I wasn't in this space, she probably wasn't in this space, but I had my own internal agenda. And I can tell you, as a therapist, every single time I met with a client and I had my own agenda, those sessions flocked. You cannot have your own agenda. You cannot say we're gonna work on this, this, and this today. And as type A people that want to be prepared, we love doing that. And we're not meeting the human or the horse.
Than we have today. And my therapy sessions became so much more powerful when I let go of what I wanted and I thought. And I went in there and met the human that saw me that day. So I wasn't doing that with Denny. I wasn't picking up on those subtle cues. And I was talking with a phenomenal woman named Amy Budd today. And she has she has Clyde Stales and she works with business humans around leadership.
Because horses are our mirrors. And so if you walk into the arena and you have a timid energy and you're supposed to be a leader, like the horse isn't gonna listen to you, they're not gonna pay attention. But as you shift your energy, you're gonna get that horse to connect with you and bring in and be able to willingly want to participate with you. Because we are in a relationship with the horse. And so
Amy was telling me a story about how she was doing a training with a team, and so it's a leadership team, and she helps you figure out what kind of leader you are naturally, not what you think you are. And so she has this team working together, and there's four humans and a horse, and they have to drive this horse. So all four humans are on ground, and they have to drive the horse through.
An obstacle course. Now, the really interesting thing here is she lets them go and starts, right? And these are a team that have already worked together. They cannot see each other because the horse is physically big enough that the people at the front cannot see the people at the back, and the people at the back cannot see the people at the front. So you have to communicate. And they're going through and they can't get this horse to go through the obstacle course. And so she pauses them.
And as they're talking, she's like, you're doing all of this without your fifth member as part of it. And they're like, what? It's like the horse. The horse is part of your team. And I see this so much, especially as a pediatric therapist. And here's a little
when we are working with kiddos, it's like that horse. As adults, we are doing all of the work around them.
Expecting them to do what we are asking, but we are not involving them as a team member. We are not necessarily working with the kiddo that we have today. We're working with our agenda and our expectations. And so once they started seeing the horse as a team member, tuning into what the horse liked and dis disliked, what the horse was ready for, what the horse wanted to do.
And they really started to work as a team, she said they were able to complete the obstacle course. But so often in horse training, we are looking at the horse as something that we work with and they follow our orders. And if not, they're disobedient. And we look at kids the same way, right? We expect that they're just gonna do what we tell them to. And as a parent, my God, would I love my kids to just do what I told them to?
First time. But in those moments, I'm not paying attention to their who they are today, the kid that I'm working with today. And I'm not aware of how many rabbits that they have accumulated in the day when I make those demands. And so here I am with Denny. And I noticed that her in the video didn't notice at the moment.
Noticed in the video, she wasn't super happy. But she didn't move away, right? It's not a big enough stressor that she's gonna move away. She's gonna move her ears, and that's it. So continue grooming.
and then I decide we're gonna work with lifting her feet because that's a goal that we have to do. So I go around and I lift her feet and
I notice she does it, but she also like isn't so happy about it. Not that she does anything overtly, but she tries to I lift her foot and she tries to put it down right away. And she turns around and she kind of bonks me with her nose. I'm not tuning in. So say we have
two or three rabbits that we're building for Denny right now. I'm also not tuning in to me and I haven't reset my nervous system from the kind of grumpies that I had around my kids, from whatever else went on my day. I've just kind of carried my bucket through.
So I'm not attuning to me or Denny in this moment. So then I go to put on her halter and she puts the halter on great. I go to tie it. She doesn't love as I'm kind of fiddling with it to tie it. She has a rope halter that I tie. And she starts to move away from me when I tie it.
I just followed her and kept tying. Did I notice in any of those moments that she was giving me signals I am not loving this? No. If I were, I would have noticed her ears when I was brushing her and I would have paused, figured out if this is okay, reset, and tried again. If I had noticed with her feet, instead of just rushing through to do foot by foot by foot, I would have paused.
I would have let her reset between each foot. I would have let myself reset and I would have moved on. Right? The halter, I would have paused. I would have let her settle, and then I would have continued tying instead of just following her after. She's telling me very plainly, if you're moving away from somebody, you're telling them very plainly, I don't want to do this. This isn't what I want to do today. All of these things we have done.
Many, many days. And all of these things she has never had a problem.
So my energy was definitely impacting her energy, and horses are 100% your mirror. So one of the reasons I love working with humans and horses together is because horses are your mirror. Where humans might mask. If you go in grumpy, the horse is gonna mirror that. If you go in scared, the horse is gonna mirror that. And so they are incredible in telling you what is going on with your own system if you pay attention. So
I get the halter on and I start leading her around. And she goes to reach out and bite me. my gosh, what a bad girl. Nope. She's not being a bad girl. She's using horse language. And I have already ignored her signs that are saying, I don't like this. I don't want this. I don't want this. And she would stop as I'm leading her, and I would, you know.
Get her to walk again instead of pausing, saying, I don't love this. Let's reset. Let's shift. Let's give you a minute. Nope. I kept going. And so she tried to bite me. And what do I do? Don't bite, right? This isn't and so what do I do? Do I pause in that moment and say, here's a signal. She's really telling me she doesn't like what we're doing.
Nope. I kept going. I had my own internal agenda and I wasn't attuning to anyone's needs, including my own. And so here we go.
So I'm working with Lady. And then I decide we're gonna do fly spray because there's fly spray out there. And my kids are content to sit there. And so I here I am in and I'm working on stuff and I wanna get stuff done. And I'm like, well, let's try fly spray. And I'd worked with water in a squirt bottle for the last couple of days. And she'd been fine with it. She stood there. Honestly, Denny has been fine with 99% of the things that we have done with her.
This was my first rough day.
And it was the first day I was not regulated myself when I went in the paddock with her. I wasn't attuning to any of the cues that she kept telling me. So I got out the fly spray and we'd used water before and I let her see the bottle, different bottle. We've used a water bottle before, and now it's a fly spray bottle and let her smell it. She was okay with it. And then I just went and squirted her and she bolted.
And as she took off, I'm holding the end of the lead rope, which then at some point we hit end to end, and she spins around and pulls me. And not enough that like I stumble or fall or anything, but enough that I felt the pull.
Here's what I now have to do. Because I breached her trust in that I'm an attuned person and watching her. She's told me multiple times she doesn't like what she's doing. She doesn't like what I'm doing. I ignored, I had my agenda, I kept pushing through. So now instead of having something that should have been so easy, because she accepted the water.
I have to backtrack and piece apart what went wrong.
Now, did I let her fully settle after she bolted? No. One of Warwick's terms is never go to bed angry. And he doesn't mean actually going to bed angry. What it is is we have to let our nervous systems hit reset. Okay. Kate Northrop talks about metabolizing the stress. So we're not just adding to the bucket.
So now my Denny girl is, I know, 10 rabbits in, and I'm still oblivious. And so I go to my logical thinking brain and okay, we've got to pick apart what went wrong with the fly spray. Is it the bottle? So we I set the bottle on the ground. Can we walk by the bottle? Yes, we can walk by the bottle. Is anybody else exhausted from just hearing everything that I did in this session?
Because I am, as I'm repeating it, going, holy shit, I should have like stopped multiple times, but I didn't. And I think we do, we put our blinders on and we go. We have that agenda, we have to get done, check, chuck, chuck.
And so I put the bottle on the ground and we walked past it and she was fine and I held it and we got to the fine. And we, I'm like, okay, so it's not the bottle rate. Is it this bottle happens to be full? The water bottle I used was not. Is the sloshing sound? So I slosh it. She's fine. We're building rabbits here. She's not actually really fine.
They're all little micro stresses. Because as I watch and really attune after the fact, she's giving me subtle signs I'm not okay with this.
And so I am working with the system that is just adding on rabbits. And so we get to the point, okay, I'm fine with that, I'm fine with that, I'm fine with that. And then what I do is, and then I move my arm like I'm spraying her. Nope, the movement seems fine. I spray it beside her, the smell seems fine, and then I go to spray her and boop, we take off.
I wasn't super in tune with each stage. Yes, she was standing there. Yes, she was tolerating. At some point we hit 13 rabbits and she bolted and we hit the end of the rope and I got pulled and she pulled around. And it was a big deal. In the sense that, my gosh, we'd never had her react like this. We've never had anything big. She's never really spooked.
We've never had any you know, this is the first time she's really reacted like this. She's just accepted everything.
Whose fault was it? 100% mine. Because she had told me multiple times, I'm not loving this. And I ignored it. I had my agenda and I was going for it.
It wasn't also in tune to my own body because after she bolted, my heart rate shot up. And I'm like, Let's take a minute. And as we took a minute, and I breathed, and she breathed, I realized how much tension I was holding to.
And so with 13 rabbits, all of these little things that we were doing, and without my kids in the paddock with me, I didn't realize how much of a buffer they were, how much of a reset, because I can't just do things back to back to back because I have kiddos. I have kiddos that want to try. So we pause and I talk things through and then they get to try and
They're feeding her and they're talking and it's a much different pacing. So if I've stressed Denny in the past, she's had micro reset p spaces and times just naturally built in because they just like feeding her. So they're just gonna feed her and we're gonna sit and talk as I try to get through things and you just don't do anything fast with kids. But here I was by myself.
And I was pushing through, tick, tick, tick, tick, not a single minute to really rest. And I wasn't picking up on anything. And she bolted. And we both hit the end of the rope. And that caused us to pause. And it caused everybody around to go, my gosh, and look up. And here we go. So when we're tuning in.
When we're seeing and I could have taken right so when we're dealing with ourselves or others and we're seeing the blow up, Denny Bolting.
was not out of nothing. It was not out of nowhere. She had told me multiple times in different ways. I'm not cool here. And I ignored all of the rabbits until that 13th rabbit got her. And so when we're looking at our own selves and our own kids, making sure that we are
Truly tuning in to who we are working with, ourselves and them. How many rabbits are there? And giving ourselves that time to hit reset and pause. I call them signals of safety for our own body, is gonna change that reaction. the why that we've had such an easy time with Denny is because I'm regulated. It's because
I'm attuned and aware of myself and her and my kids. And the bad day that I had, and I think as a mom, you probably really feel this with me. When as moms, we are having bad days, the rest of the house, including the dog, is having a bad day. And that's the one day that we need everything to go smoothly. It's because we're all co-regulating. It's because we're all working off that same drumbeat.
And my energy, because I was not attuned to me and dysregulated, dysregulated everybody else. And I didn't have the awareness and ability to bring myself back to make sure that I was okay before I walked into the paddock. And they also had that agenda. And so I think my biggest aha was this week did not go at all as expected.
This week was a lot tougher because I was dysregulated. And I was working from an agenda, not working with the horse that I have. I expected her to be okay with something that we've done before, and she doesn't she wasn't that day. And I need to reset and be okay with that. And tune into myself and see where I needed to reset and maybe not be in the paddock or maybe just.
play around with her and not have let's try a bunch of new stuff just because I want to.
I hope you got some aha moments from my experiences. And I want to say that I am grateful that you are here. I do see the hard work that you're doing, the load that you're carrying, that mental and emotional load, really big as a mom. And to give yourself permission to be aware of your own 13 rabbit limits.
To give yourself that space to reset when you need it and to work with the you that is showing up today. Because I know, at least in my own body, that you, that me is not the same every single day. And allowing myself the permission to say, you know what, maybe that day I shouldn't have worked with her because I didn't have the capacity, even though I had the like, I need to check off a box. So give yourself that space.
Know that I see you, know that I appreciate you, and I want to wish you all the happiness that today can bring. And I will talk to you on the next episode.
Speaker 2 (40:51)
Hey, before you go, just a little bit of legal. This podcast is designed for educational purposes only. It is not to replace any expert advice from your doctors, therapists, coaches, or any other professional that you would work with. It's just a chat with a friend, me, where we get curious about ideas, thoughts, and things that are going on in our lives.
As we're talking about friends, if you know someone who would benefit from a conversation today, please share because I think the more that we open up these conversations, the more benefit we all get. So until next time, give yourself a big hug from me and stay curious because that's the fun in this world.