The Whole Horse Podcast with Alexa Linton

A very special Whole Horse episode with Anna Marciniak of OneHorseLife, as she shares about her journey with horses and her unique and important perspective on training horses in a way that meets the needs of each horse, by releasing residual tension and helping horses reach greater levels of relaxation and wellbeing. Anna has a great deal of wisdom to share and I look forward to having her back on the podcast in the near future to answer your questions and further explore her perspective on releasing tension in the stomach/gut, and improving gut health in our horses through relaxation. 

"I am especially interested in making things happen. But not in any way. I want to do it in the most optimal way, the way that adds to my and my horse’s being. For me the path to that leads through releasing physical and psychological tensions from horses and humans. I do dressage, liberty, long reins... but most importantly thanks to horses I REALLY AM, and then I translate it into actions.

This makes my life and the life of my horses filled with purpose. I am Anna Marciniak from Spain, and I invite you for a journey into Conscious Muscle Relaxation for horses — Optimal Performance Program."

To learn more about Anna and her work visit https://onehorselife.com

or https://www.facebook.com/OneHorseLife/

Season 3 is proving to be awesome so far! In this episode, I sit down with Violet van Hees to talk about safety - how to create it with our horses, how it looks and feels on a physiological level, and how our felt sense of being safe or unsafe impacts our ability (and our horses ability) to learn and adapt. We also got into the topic of consent and horses, a particularly important and pertinent conversation in our current changing world. Such a worthwhile exploration - I hope you enjoy it as much as we did! 

As a Tellington TTouch® Equine Practitioner and a Feldenkrais® Practitioner living in Deep Bay on Vancouver Island, Violet is fascinated with helping people and animals open up movement freedom, and get stuck stuff - unstuck.  She enjoys combining science with practical experience and the "feel" of doing. Violet loves to share how research is confirming things that help explain why the stuff we do works the magic that it does.  For more info about Violet, visit www.violetvanhees.com

In our first Whole Horse Podcast of Season 3, Taming Wild's Elsa Sinclair shares the differences between dominance and passive horse training, the simple yet profound essence of her work and how to apply it, the core steps to connection, and the creation of her documentary Taming Wild: Pura Vida, capturing an epic 2 week journey across the jungles of Costa Rica with two rescued horses. She also opens up about her third documentary film in progress, working with two stallions, one wild, one from a bucking string, sharing her struggles and her realizations, and the impact of physical and emotional trauma on adaptability. It is a beautiful conversation and the perfect way to kick off season 3. Enjoy! 

What is Freedom Based Training? Perhaps the best way to explain it is to break it down: Training is the art of developing toward an end goal. Freedom is the ability to make the right choices for you in any given situation. Freedom Based Training embraces the paradox of these two ideas – freedom and training. To do this we develop depth of relationship and width of skill in a balance, using passive leadership instead of dominant leadership.

Elsa Sinclair is a professional horse trainer and instructor who brings to the horse world a unique and powerful perspective. Gathering together awareness from a variety of equine disciplines, Elsa has an enthusiasm for developing human ~ equine partnerships to fully enjoy the process of learning and growing in the direction of their goals. Elsa draws on a long and diverse history with horses as she travels now through her latest adventure of Taming Wild. What if horses were given a choice? Would they let us ride them? Without force or tools to control and without bribes to lure them? Elsa asked the questions, embarked on a project to find out and ultimately filmed a movie about the process. What started as simple questions, birthed the movie Taming Wild, an online course for those interested in learning Freedom Based Training, and a following of people who seek their own answers in what it takes to work more collaboratively with horses.

Find out more about Elsa and her work at www.tamingwild.com.

Enjoy!

This episode celebrates the release of Hannah Weston's new book Connection Training! After our first episode together, I couldn't wait to chat with her again, and I was thrilled when I received a copy of her book pre-release. Positive training has been on my radar for years, but I admit to being a skeptic - chatting with Hannah has been a breath of fresh air, bringing in essential and connecting variations and a comprehensive understanding of equine emotions. I'm excited to try some of the connecting episodes in the book with Diva, and will report back in a future Hannah episode on our progress! 

Hannah co-founded the Equine Clicker Conference in 2012, with Rachel Bedingfield, bringing the world’s most prominent reward-based horse trainers together, both live and online, to share ideas and discuss approaches to this ground-breaking work.

Hannah’s unique combination of skills complement each other brilliantly, giving her a holistic understanding and approach to horse training. It is all underpinned with Connection Training – using positivity, rewards and putting the horse’s emotions first. She works to create a bridge between training horses to move brilliantly and applied reward-based principles to it to train horses classical dressage with choice, joy and plenty of targets! Hannah has also attended courses with Enlightened Equitation, Eleanor Mercer, anatomy dissections and stretching and mobilization (for horses) clinics, as well as deepening her own body awareness through Tai Chi, Pilates and yoga.

Learn more at https://connectiontraining.com/

 and https://www.facebook.com/pg/connectiontraining

One of my favourite podcast guests and dropping some amazing wisdom about horses and life! Heather Nelson and I sat together on her parents cozy couch in Cowichan Bay with her recently injured leg propped up for this hilarious, open and real conversation about being with injuries, seeing opportunities, laughter, the fun of felting horses and much more. So good! 

Heather Nelson is a liberty training specialist, known for starting from the beginning without the lines and inspiring horses through connection. She combines her background in ground work, classical dressage, intuitive training and liberty to help horse lovers like you tap into your own innate ability to earn a big YES from your horse so you can coach your horse to develop to their highest potential in self expression and balance. Heather is sought after for her engaging workshops and demonstrations where she teaches people to access leadership and respect through creative play, which is just as out of the box as it sounds.

Find her at http://www.heathernelsonlibertytraining.com/

Enjoy!

This episode of the Podcast is the geekiest we've ever gone! And that's saying a lot. Elisse Miki of Equilibria Therapeutics and I venture into some of our favourite territory, the cranium, and more specifically the sphenoid bone, and its relationship to the master gland, the pituitary, and subsequent potential impact on the endocrine system. We also can't help but get into all the interconnections, how to tell if your horse has a possible sphenoid issue, and what to do to help, as well as a conversation about Jenna, Elisse's most recent and very fascinating rehabilitation project.

As a human and equine therapist with over 15 years of experience working with clients in a therapeutic setting, Elisse brings a wide variety of modalities into her practice. She began her career working as an Exercise Physiologist having completed her Bachelors in Kinesiology then went on to obtain her Registered Massage Therapy Licence. She has since gone on to complete Diplomas in Equine Therapy, Equine Craniosacral, and currently in the process of completing both her Human and Equine Osteopathy Diplomas concurrently. Elisse is also an Instructor of RMT at the West Coast College of Massage Therapy and a Certified Equine Assisted Learning Instructor. Some of her clients include the Langley Equestrian Academy, Cloverdale Rodeo, and the International Professional Rugby 7s teams. Her current focus lies in research and development of current standards of practice in the equine industry. Elisse hosts clinics for horse owners and will be offering continuing education courses for existing health care professionals and equine therapists starting in January 2020.

Website - www.equilibriatherapeutics.com Email - [email protected] Facebook Personal - https://www.facebook.com/elisse.miki Facebook Business Page - Equilibria Therapeutics - https://www.facebook.com/elissemikirmt/

I love meeting and chatting with people that are changing our way of being with horses! It was such a pleasure to connect with Hannah Weston, co-founder of Connection Training. What a mission she's on! We got into how to build bridges between more traditional training and reward-based positive training, how to work with horses that tend to get distracted by treats, trust building with horses that have gone through trauma, and how to use this type of training to create the kind of connection that builds curiousity, courage, and relaxation. Diva and I are definitely going to try out some of her suggestions! 

Hannah co-founded the Equine Clicker Conference in 2012, with Rachel Bedingfield, bringing the world’s most prominent reward-based horse trainers together, both live and online, to share ideas and discuss approaches to this ground-breaking work.

Hannah’s unique combination of skills complement each other brilliantly, giving her a holistic understanding and approach to horse training. It is all underpinned with Connection Training – using positivity, rewards and putting the horse’s emotions first. She works to create a bridge between training horses to move brilliantly and applied reward-based principles to it to train horses classical dressage with choice, joy and plenty of targets! Hannah has also attended courses with Enlightened Equitation, Eleanor Mercer, anatomy dissections and stretching and mobilization (for horses) clinics, as well as deepening her own body awareness through Tai Chi, Pilates and yoga. 

Learn more at https://connectiontraining.com/

What a pleasure to have a conversation with Katarina Lundgren, founder of the MiMer Centre in Sweden! Katarina is currently writing her masters thesis, studying the relationship between horses and humans, as found in Equine Facilitated Learning and Psychotherapy environments, and travels worldwide to co-teach with previous podcast guest Emily Keison. In this episode we covered a lot of ground, discussing creating more optimal horse environments, what needs often gets missed in Equine therapy settings, how we can own and work with our fear and develop more awareness, and her perspective on the best next steps for the horse industry as a whole. 

Katarina’s passions are understanding and working with equines and humans in therapy, so it can benefit both clients and horses.

She is involved in research and educational projects to spread knowledge, awareness of ethics, welfare and best practices when we work with Equines in Therapy. The research she is involved in focuses on equine-equine and equine-human interaction. She is currently writing her master’s thesis on equine-human interaction in Equine Assisted Psychotherapy.

She is an Equine Professional who works in teams and offers experiential learning and therapy with horses. She travels the world to educate about the teamwork, the equine’s role and welfare needs and the Equine Professional’s role, need of knowledge, awareness and responsibility in Equine Assisted Activities and Therapies.

She is a co-founder and chair of the board in MiMer, a small independent education, research and treatment center. MiMer is a co-organizer of the Minds-n-Motion “A Horse is a Horse, of Course?!” International Symposiums on Equine Welfare and Wellness and the publisher of the following compendiums with the same name.

Learn more at http://www.mimercentre.org

It's the return of Equijay's Jayne Roberts, joining us all the way from Australia, and diving right into all sorts of wonderfully uncomfortable places! We talked menstrual cycles, pleasure, sensuality, reproductive health, emotional intelligence and how integrated all of these things are with our relationship with our horses. A heads up, we get raw, we get vulnerable, I share some very personal things. So yes, it's awesome! 

Jayne Roberts is a horse woman who wants to create a world where we’re all one big healthy happy herd. She combines over four decades of equine industry experience, research and qualifications (and a whole lotta life!) to help women and horses to nourish and flourish, beginning with the grassroots of Forage, Friendship and Freedom.

As an international equestrienne, Jayne coaches clients around the world and has played a pivotal role in the development and management of several equine enterprises in the UK, USA and Australia. She holds an MSc & BSc in Equine Science, is a Registered Animal Nutritionist, Certified Holistic Land Management Practitioner & most recently Feminine Embodiment Yoga & iRest Meditation Teacher. In addition to guest lecturing at the University of Edinburgh and supervising post-graduate research, Jayne has published peer-reviewed papers in the Journal of Equine Veterinary Science and regularly contributes to equine publications and industry groups. Along with traditional Pony Club, British Horse Society & competitive show jumping beginnings she shakes things up with a wealth of untraditional, real ‘n raw as a rural ambulatory Equine Vet Tech!

With one foot in the science stirrup, and one firmly grounded on the yoga mat, she's currently deconstructing much of what she learnt in her first round. Her heart-felt purpose is to help deepen the horse-human relationship and live a life that is wildly nourished, intimately connected and lived with a felt-sense of true freedom.

If you’d like to come along for the ride, you can find her at www.equijay.com or on Facebook or Instagram.

This podcast episode with Lara of the Gift of the Horse is definitely one of my favourites! What a beautiful conversation we had around how we can serve our horses, how we can shift from "using" horses to listening to them, what happens when we let go of our agendas and expectations, and of course, we couldn't help but talk about our amazing mares Vari and Diva. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did! 

At The Gift of The Horse we embark on a beautiful practice of mindfulness, caregiving and guardianship towards the horse, where we recognize that the horse is far more than what appears to us in the physical form. We see beyond labels and stories to the pure being that is no different to you or me. Through this practice we understand from the inside out, that the horse does not exist to serve us. He in fact plays a vital role in our evolution to a higher consciousness. Lara holds intimate online immersion groups exploring this mindfulness practice with horses and she is the author of The Gift of The Horse Books. Her Foundation Course and Mindfulness Practice Immersion Groups are open to all who feel a calling to go deeper, to look beyond our norms and traditions and to see the horse for who she really is. Which in truth, is no different to you.

Find more details at www.facebook.com/thegiftofthehorsebook/

and at www.thegiftofthehorse.com