Finding Balance: Technology, Racehorses, and Thrilling Stories with Victor Bahna

Victor Bahna is a tech industry veteran, thoroughbred racing enthusiast, and the author of the gripping new thriller, Heliacal Star. Based in Seattle, Victor has seamlessly blended his passions for technology and racehorses into a life filled with discovery, balance, and storytelling. In his debut novel, Heliacal Star, Victor explores the thrilling yet darker sides of the racing industry, creating a narrative that captivates and informs. In this episode, Victor shares his unique journey, insights into horse racing and the tech world, and lessons learned from the therapeutic bond with his retired racehorses.

About Heliacal Star
Heliacal Star is an exhilarating and emotional novel centered on the rich history and thrilling atmosphere of thoroughbred racing. It offers gripping moments of suspense that build at a great pace as the plot thickens, keeping readers on edge.
Learn More at https://victorbahna.com

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Victor’s Journey from Tech to Racehorses and Writing (Starts at 1:00) Victor discusses growing up in Long Island, his transition into the tech world, and how a passion for racehorses rekindled his creative pursuits.
• Life Lessons from the Track (Starts at 12:30) From his first experiences with racehorses to founding Royal Victory Thoroughbreds, Victor shares the challenges and joys of owning and breeding thoroughbreds.
• The Writing Process for Heliacal Star (Starts at 25:00) Victor dives into the inspirations for his novel, how he self-published it, and its message about reform in the racing industry.
• Balancing Tech Stress with the Healing Power of Retired Racehorses (Starts at 35:45) Victor reveals how working with retired racehorses has profoundly influenced his approach to leadership, emotional regulation, and personal growth.
• The Future of Horse Racing and Ethical Breeding (Starts at 50:15) A deep dive into Victor’s hopes for the racing industry, including reforms and the importance of giving racehorses meaningful lives beyond the track.

Memorable Moments from the Episode

• The transformative impact of riding and caring for retired racehorses on Victor’s approach to stress and relationships (36:00).
• How Heliacal Star highlights issues within the racing industry while honoring its legacy (26:30).
• Victor's humorous yet insightful story of his early foray into betting and racehorse ownership (10:15).
• The therapeutic lessons racehorses taught Victor, from de-escalation to building trust (38:45).

Contact Victor Bahna

🌐 Website: victorbahna.com
📖 Purchase Heliacal Star on Amazon

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If you've ever wondered how the classic animal scenes in movies get made, Terry Kuebler, has has a lifetime of experience behind the scenes in Hollywood.

Starting as an animal trainer and horsewoman at home in California she entered the movie industry in the 1980s and helped create some very iconic movies- listen on to hear about that.

But there's way more to Terry than simply animal training. After a lesson from a very particular lion - a story that will leave you breathless- Terry realized that she- and the industry- needed a radically different approach. 

She learned not to train animals but to listen to them- and from that point on her life was transformed. As you're will be too once you hear what the animals have to say.

Contact Terry:

• https://www.terrykuebler.com

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• https://rupertisaacson.com

If you haven't watched the film My Octopus Teacher, then stop reading this right now and go to Netflix. (Trailer here on YouTube)

An extraordinary work, which chronicles the relationship between South African diver and director Craig Foster and, yes, a wild octopus, the film won an Oscar and rightly so. The link between man and nature shown in the movie - or rather the clear reminder that man is nature and not removed from it in some way, as we may erroneously sometimes think, is shown with startling intimacy and  a sense of wonder that brings you straight back to childhood.

Just watching My Octopus Teacher is very healing, but there is much much more to Craig Foster and his work than this one extraordinary movie.

I have been lucky enough to Craig for...well, a long time. When we first met i was campaigning for the San Bushmen of Botswana as a human rights activist - a story that is told in my books The Healing Land and the Long Ride Home - he and his brother Damon had recently completed a film called The Great Dance, following the firtunes of three master hunters of the San people and capturing seemingly impossible footage of, for example, a hunt in which the hunter must 'become' the animal - effectively shape-shifting.

A further film, Cosmic Africa, took us into astronomy through the eyes of a black South African astro-physicist and a journey into the way the universe is interpreted through the African mind.

Other movies included scuba diving into a crocodile's lair in the Okavango Swamps, and swimming with man eating sharks...the list goes on.

Recently, Craig published a book - Amphibious Soul, about his own relationship with the cold water kelp forest - the African Sea forest - where his encounter with his octopus teacher happened, and also about the fact because our species , homo sapiens sapiens, evolved at the margins of land and water where the most food is, we developed an amphibious nature at the dawn of our evolution.

Because of this, water brings out play, joy, exploration, wonder in us and connects us direct to nature, perhaps to the divine, more directly than almost any other means. Then there's tracking, the need for following patterns and signs in nature and beyond, which seems completely linked to happiness and fulfillment... but let's hear this and more from the mouth of the man himself. Listen on, Craig Foster has spent a lifetime doing the impossible and making a living through bringing wonder into the lives of people worldwide.

This conversation is no exception.

Books, Films, Causes & Contact:

• Amphibious Soul: https://amzn.to/3WrMJ6L
• My Octopus Teacher:
  • Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0LTDhqe5A
  • Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81045007
• The Great Dance
• The Sea Change Project: https://seachangeproject.com/

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https://rupertisaacson.com

There are people out there in the world who make good things happen. The good things you see on your news feeds - not the doom scrolling.

The good documentaries you might have watched, the projects fighting climate change, AIDS, human rights abuses and the like - its often easy to forget that there are actual individuals behind the scenes making these things happen, then helping them get out to the audiences that need them, and finally leveraging those projects into actual change both at a policy level and for real lives of real people living in those conditions.

Ginny Jordan is one of these behind the scenes individuals - whether it was pioneering alternative education in the USA, helping women and children - first in Africa, and then all over the world living with HIV to form businesses, through Bead for Life and Street Business School,  whether it was bringing Climate Change to cinemas and televisions around the world through the groundbreaking movies Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral, and then helping to support the organizations finding the solutions to these pressing issues of our times, or whether...well you'll have to listen to find out what she's up to now. 

It can sound like a grand litany of successes, but in ever self actualized life there is, well, a life. Ginny has battled multiple bouts of cancer, crippling fights with Meuniere's Disease, and has had large parts of herself cut away. She knows what it is to be a mother battling these challenges and at the same time trying to make sure the kids are OK.

Bottom line, Ginny Jordan is one of the most effective people on the planet, while at the same time living daily with the very human realities of frailty and physical limitation. How do people like her do it? Listen on and be inspired.

Books, Films, Causes & Contact:
Book: Clear Cut. It's by Ginny Jordan
Bead for Life: www.beadforlife.org
[email protected]
Films: 

• Social Dilemma
• Chasing Ice
• Chasing Coral

Find our other shows and programs:
https://rupertisaacson.com

That the Carradine family is a Hollywood dynasty is common knowledge.

Less known is that one of its scions - Kansas Carradine, daughter of legendary actor David Carradine (Kung Fu, Kill Bill et al) has become possibly one of the most self actualized people of her generation and is going around the world helping others to do the same.

Kansas Carradine is an amazing talent: a professional trick rider and rope since her childhood, a stunt rider and actress, a therapist with the legendary HeartMath Insititute which conducts research into the electromagnetic fields of hearts and how this affects the human nervous system, brain and immune system, a diplomat and peace broker with the G20...as well as a wife and mother.

Kansas Carradine is that rare thing - someone who has come through the maestrom of celebrity life without their ego going supernova, and who has emerged an approachable human being in service to the common good in a level that is frankly breathtaking. Listen on and learn how to look at life through the lens of the heart - it will change your reality.

Contact Kansas
https://www.circuscowgirl.com/
https://www.facebook.com/circuscowgirl/
 https://www.fyera.org

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https://rupertisaacson.com

Many of us dream about - or at the very least wonder about - the phenomen of becoming a YouTuber. Actually making a living out of content creation. Many of us also dream of being able to positively influence the lives of others this way and spread knowledge of healing and well being for the common good while, well being successful. Sukie Baxter, whose work on explaining the autonomic nervous system and how it can be harnessed to work more efficiently for health and happiness, has done just that. Her views on YouTube have gone into the millions without having to resort to gossip, trolling celebrities, car crashes or even cute dogs riding bicycles. Sukie's work is just flat out good - helpful, easy to understand and implement and actually helping one feel and do better.

It wasn't always this way - Sukie's path to Self Actualization was, like everyone's - hard earned. Becoming a Rolfer (a lesser known but highly effective form of bodywork) in her early 20s she built a practice over almost two decades that while successful, became stressful, over scheduled, and eventually drained her of energy. Then Covid hit and in one instant her whole business evaporated.That's when,  born from a desire to do something productive in that time of universal suffering, Sukie began to put out informative YouTube videos on how to make your body and nervous system your friend not your foe. Now, four years later, Sukie has achieved an enviable level of freedom by doing good.

But that isn't all. In this fascinating podcast she shares with us not just her personal and professional journey but also how the autonomic nervous system actually works, what the nuts and bolts of human happiness are, and even how to make YouTube videos that  actually get seen. Listen on people, Sukie has much to teach us.

YouTube Tools mentioned:
Keywords everywhere
TubeBuddy

Contact Sukie Baxter
https://wholebodyrevolution.com
https://youtube.com/sukiebaxter
[email protected] 

Find our other shows and programs:
https://rupertisaacson.com

Have you ever dreamed of being a filmmaker, a producer? A storyteller of the screen? We all have at some point -anyone who consumes screen entertainment hankers at some point to be the one making the content. Yet how to even get started? Even in these days of YouTubers and independent film making platforms where movies made on cell phones get sold to TV, we know its hard. How do you get the finances, the actors, the costumes, the scripts? How do you put it all together and make a go of it, a successful career of it?

Diana Elbaum knows how. Starting as a confused young Belgian girl with a naive desire to tell stories, her two companies, Entre Chien et Loup (between wolf and dog) and Beluga Tree have produced well over ninety films of all genres. She’s done the Hollywood thing – her groundbreaking movie The Congress featured Robin Wright, Danny Huston and Harvey Keitel. But Diana has also explored a side of film that many of us in the English speaking world are largely unaware of – the thriving French, Belgian and European cinematic and television world which produces billions of dollars a year and many works of great quality – a goodly number of which then get bought by Hollywood and put into English language versions.

Diana has won a string of awards, started the EP2C Workshop which helps young film makers from around the world – or even older ones – get started. Maybe she can help you.

So listen on, if there was ever a woman who has self actualized, and at the same time helped dozens of others do the same, it's Diana Elbaum.

Contact Diana
[email protected]

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https://rupertisaacson.com

Have you ever heard of the Grand Tour? If you haven’t, you’ve certainly benefited from it – in the 18th and 19th centuries young artists, composers and  aristocrats from northern Europe, most especially England and Germany, used to tour the great cities of Renaissance Italy, adventuring in all sorts of dissolute ways but also learning the Classics along the way, not to mention witnessing the great art of Venice, Florence and Rome, and bringing this Enlightenment firmly into our modern consciousness. Byron, the Shelleys, Goethe – all found their muse on the Grand Tour. We would have no Frankenstein, no Childe Harold, no Faust if their authors had not had their artistic world view split wide open in the Uffizi, the Vatican and The Grand Canal  Even Mark Twain, that great alderman of American letters, was by his own admission greatly affected in his writing by having made this rite of passage.

Today, a small British outfit with the succinctly appropriate name of Art History Abroad is helping people self-actualize by making the Grand Tour in our post-modern age. Can this old aristocratic tradition be democratized? Could deep immersion into the realm of art and beauty still be part of making a young (or indeed any age) person, a more rounded, more effective, indeed more empathetic individual, better able to tackle the vicissitudes of our own times?

Nick Ross, our guest on this edition of Live Free Ride Free, has demonstrated that yes, art, beauty, the Grand Tour can indeed set us free, Despite battling an early paralysis, endless setbacks and the perhaps inevitable -  you cant make a living doing something so old fashioned – nay-sayers, has spent the past thirty five years dramatically opening up the world view of countless Brits, Americans and others, helping them find themselves through art – and its timeless, peerless wonder. Nick Ross has, one could say, self-actualized through helping others do the same. The arts, it seems, can connect us with the divine with ourselves. Listen on, for in many ways Nick has, frankly, pulled off the impossible.

Contact Nick
https://www.arthistoryabroad.com/
[email protected]

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https://rupertisaacson.com

To live free and ride free you don't have to be a celeb. You don't have to be changing the world in an obvious way. The non-obvious, the non celebrity pathway is just as powerful but oft overlooked. With that in mind I feel it's very important to balance the extraordinary ways in which we have seen guests on the podcast live self actualized lived with equally extraordinary tales of a more ordinary path. Ordinary circumstances is perhaps a better way of putting it. But what extraordinary response to those circumstances. Jill Cohen, of Santa Cruz, California, is one of these extraordinarily self actualized ordinary people. Like you, like me, changing the world in ways more subtle. There is much to learn from Jill.

A Jewish mother, who runs a healing practice so effective that her waiting list is miles long - yet you've never heard of her. Five times married, sailed around the world, an equestrian, always self supporting. A self-proclaimed hippie flying that freedom flag high, who began to earn her living as a potter at the age of 15. never compromising her independence, not for society, not for any man, and making a go of it.

But there's more. In this episode we ask, is it possible to self actualize and change the world through quiet service? Jill is grandmother to an extraordinary but challenging autistic young man, Sequoia. Giving up her freedom to co-create a safe environment in the California Hills for her granddaughter, daughter and parent, Jill sacrificed a lot, took on the role of sole breadwinner and equal care giver, but achieved great insights and great joy. No sooner had that adventure run its course than her own mother, declining with dementia, needed the same care and with the same immediate, unthinking courage, Jill rose to that occasion too. The freedom to move at will, go where she wanted, how she wanted with whom she wanted now replaced with years of service to these demanding family members, and at the same time developing and deepening her mastery of the healing arts, Jill has never lost her sense of humour, her perspective, her deep and quiet joy. Can we learn from tribal elders like Jill? Indeed, we can, and must, if we are going to self actualize in our daily, our ordinary lives. For this of course is where we are closest to the diving. So, listen on, to hear Jill is to love her. And you'll never regard your seemingly ordinary life as quite so ordinary again.

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https://rupertisaacson.com

Have you ever gone looking for treasure. And found it? Like many who go looking for gold, the first clues came through offhand comments, snatches overheard conversations that somehow struck a resonance, a chord, in the gut. I had embarked upon a journey to the centre of the Old Masters tradition of dressage. At first, I didn't know that was what I was doing. My quest was to understand more about how to truly and softly collect a horse _ and not for the usual reasons. You see, I had stumbled into something; when riding with my then four-year-old autistic son Rowan I had noticed from the first ride that when the horse was more collected, he spoke more. Intrigued, I set out to find out why. Consulting with neuroscientists. it was explained to me that the soft rhythmic hip rocking experienced when riding a horse this way feels so good ( and we all know it does) because it causes the body to produce a hormone called oxytocin, which is in itself a sort of Holy Grail. >For it is the joy hormone. Its also the hormone of communication.

So, what has this to do with my guest for this fascinating podcast, Sofia Valenca? Well, realizing that I needed to know more about collection so as to be able to produce more oxytocin and therefore get more communication from my son and the other young autists with whom I was starting to work as part of what is now Horse Boy Method, I realized I needed to learn more about dressage. Now, anyone who knows anything about horses knows that dressage, real light dressage, is a complex and difficult skill to learn, and takes about 500 years or so. I didn't have 500 years, and I found the first dressage lessons I took unclear, unfocused even punitive, with the instructors barking orders but not really explaining how....

I consulted with dressage professionals I knew, What would you do if you were in y position, I asked, and needed to learn this impossible skill not in centuries or aons, but in as efficient and enjoyable a way as possible, Go ti Portugal they all said. Why, I asked? Because that is where they still use dressage for the original purpose of war, so they don't mess around. They teach you on schoolmaster horses that know all the fancy stuff, and at the same time teach you the in-hand work, where you learn it from the ground and also create a balanced horse underneath you that fully understand the work. that made sense, but wait, I said, Portugal isn't at war with anyone, right? No, it was explained to me, its about the mounted bullfight - Portuguese bullfighters don't try and kill the bull, as happens in Spain. Instead, they learn to dance around it on horseback. One doesn't want to bullfight of course, but to learn those martial arts skills with the horse, well, that's true dressage.

So down I went to Portugal and found this was indeed all true. I also began to hear, not just in Portugal but in the UK, the USA, France, elsewhere a certain name began to come up over and over again. Valenca.

The whole Valenca family - headed by Mastre Luis Valenca, his three daughters Sofia, Phillipa and Bea and now his granddaughter Ines are legends in the dressage world. Not bullfightes, but equestrian artists, the family is a  hidden treasure that many have heard of, but few have found. Which is strange because you couldn't find a nicer, more open, more approachable bunch. The first five days in their Picadoro (the small inside arena they use in Portugal) I learned more about horses and horsemanship than i had learned in years of lessons elsewhere. I also saw a family dedicated to joy, to art, to self expression and self actualization, who were dedicating their lives to helping others set their dreams free, Its no wonder that the family produces the incredible horses that perform the fantasy sequences in the massively successful equestrian theater spectacular Cavalluna, which tours Germany six months of the year. It's about turning dreams to reality. How do they do it? Well, listen to Sofia now. You may be into horses, you may not, but this family, which truly comprises one of Europe's national treasures, can teach as all a thing or two about the art of whispering one's dreams into being. Listen on.

Contact Sofia
https://valencaequestrianacademy.com
[email protected] 

Find our other shows and programs:
https://rupertisaacson.com