Good Morning everybody!
Christiane here, and it is another Wednesday and I really love to combine Confident Rider
with Happy Horse Wednesday because in the end, it's both.
It always is.
So we are a couple of minutes early.
If you're joining me, today is about the Sensory Diet that you can create for your
horse to keep it more attentive, more calm, and more focused.
And that is in particular, for horses that tend to kind of all of a sudden blow up and
you don't know why.
So, a couple of minutes; if you join – (Good Morning, Donna) – if you join us on replay,
you can fast forward a couple of minutes but we're going to get started.
So Donna, do you have a horse that you think might be kind of sensitive or are you sensitive
because that's a real issue to point, as well.
So as always, I don't always see the comments on my camera here so I'm going to search
for myself on Facebook.
Hi Lori, Good Morning!
Fantastic.
So let me see the answers because once again, I don't think I can see them on my camera.
Oh, good morning!
I can see that.
Lori, do you have a horse – (Good Morning, Rose) – Lori or Rose, anybody, Donna – "we're
both sensitive"; isn't that interesting.
Donna, so what are you sensitive to?
Is it sound?
Is it all of it?
Good Morning, Patti; oh my God, so nice to see you.
I'm so glad to do this every week!
This is just the coolest thing.
And for some reason, I can't see the comments so I can focus more on the camera, actually.
So, are you sensitive?
Do you have a sensitive horse?
What do you usually do – (Thanks for the heart) – as always, share this because I
think in particular today, it is about the horse but it is about the person whether even
you're a rider or not, to create your own Sensory Diet so you can be more focused, more
attentive, and more calm throughout the day is something we can all use.
So, share if you feel called to.
Patti, okay thank you, Patti for sharing.
So Donna says, "He reacts to visual".
So let's officially start.
It is 9AM, Pacific.
I'm welcoming all of you to another focus on both the confident rider and the happy
horse because what better than to create a diet, a Sensory Diet for your horse that allows
you to have a calmer, more focused, and attentive horse, and your horse doesn't have to blow
a fuse because no horse in the world likes to do that.
So Donna says, "I'm sensitive to him"; yup, okay.
Got that but I don't know if I could help with that but let's see.
Okay so let's get started.
Let me get my notes.
So I'm going to give a little background because it's almost like Part 2.
For those of you who have not watched Part 1, it is last week's recording.
You can see it under Videos on my Facebook page.
It talks about that we don't just have five senses, but actually seven or sometimes eight
but we're focusing on seven.
Three of them are helping us with regulating ourselves.
And that is the focus of today.
The idea is how can we regulate; how can uses these senses to regulate.
Now, I'm going to give a little recap for those that have not seen last week's episode.
So it started when a community member, Susan, actually sent me a direct email, and I think
some of you, Denise for example, has the same horse.
"My horse is the calmest horse in the world, laid back, easy going, but when we get to
noisy environments with lots of other horses, lots of other things going on, he just all
of a sudden loses it.
Just goes crazy at times even resulting (Good Morning, Cecilia) – in bucking and other
dangerous behaviors.
And so catches me by surprise.
I'm now worried about taking him anywhere."
So this is the kind of horse that you can't feel confident about because you can't figure
out; it feels like out of the blue.
I can tell you it's not.
So for all of you who are Moms, most of you, you know that child at the end of the day
that just – it was fine, everything was fine, everything is fine; this is a really
great day; and then all of a sudden it results in a temper tantrum.
And you have no idea, "Where the hell did that come from?"
Well sometimes as Moms, we actually do have a pretty good idea and we say things like,
"He got overstimulated" "It was just too much for him" – too much noise, too
much this, not enough nap.
We get that as Moms.
We don't always get it around our horses.
So that's what the topic is today but it helps to anchor it in real life.
We have all seen kids melt down.
We have seen ourselves melt down.
I do.
Like I mentioned I think last week, the hardest thing was when my husband was on a business
trip and I had my two little daughters, and as the day went by, they would need more like
they got more and more clingy and they wanted more touch.
And I got more and more sensitive to their touch.
At the end of the day when they were just like, "Mommy!"
I could've just, just my skin was just crawling.
And I wasn't always the most patient Mom at that point.
I'm sure you can relate.
So, let's talk about – thumbs up on that one, right?
Okay so what are the; so we have, just a quick recap – we have smell, we have auditory,
olfactory, auditory, taste, we have touch, and we have vision.
We have also proprioceptive - the sense of self and parts that we cannot see.
So if you think about it just without looking, you know what you're sitting on.
You can feel how hard or soft it is, if you're sitting.
If you're standing, you can feel it underneath your feet.
You know if you're standing on sand, if you're standing on a hard surface.
That's proprioception.
You don't need to see it in order to know it.
The vestibular system is the inner ear balance system.
So that was pretty clear.
And then touch, one of the five, that's why it's seven all together, is another
one that we can use both for up and for down regulation.
So those three – proprioception, touch, and vestibular.
Now before I get going, why do I know this and how is that relevant to the horse, and
is there research about it?
I want to make sure.
One is I was an occupational therapist and I specialized in working with children through
my hippotherapy practice, on integrating those senses.
A lot of children with developmental delays and children with autism, have issues integrating
all these senses.
So a lot of the things we did during therapy was doing that so that's where my expertise
comes from.
Two is it has now more into more than that.
There's now literature about for adults to self-regulate.
And for just us to regulate our senses.
Is there research around horses?
Anecdotal; here and there; I've done a lot of research to see like has somebody actually
– I'm not the only occupational therapist working with horses – has never really anybody
seen this or done work on it.
I bet you there's a lot of anecdotal evidence but I have not yet seen horses studied.
That said, we started off with children that had issues.
Now, we're transferring it to adults, and the senses are identical in all of us.
So I'm confident that with you experimenting with this, we can actually kind of collect
some empirical study or a research or findings that allow us to say, "Yup, that works"
whether some huge person researched it or not.
But, the disclaimer is I don't know.
I need you to practice.
I need you to experiment.
I need you to see how it works.
So, I'm not coming up with this new theory like Sensory Diet for Horses, it just solves
all your problems.
Okay, alright.
So let me see if any comments; if I missed anything.
Okay, cool.
Oh, hi Gail!
I didn't see that.
Good afternoon!
Cecilia, alright.
So now let's dive in with this little disclaimer.
So we got these three senses – proprioception, vestibular, and touch.
And again, I was telling the story about – (Hi, Trish.
Video is choppy; see if everybody else does.
If not, it's on your side.)
Okay so, imagine yourself all droopy and drowsy.
So okay, I'm going to start off – there's a level from 1 to 10 – think about it.
And I'm always talking about alertness levels – 0 is deep asleep; 10 you just totally
lost it.
So just quickly, I don't want to interrupt, but yes, Trish all the videos are automatically
recorded by Facebook.
Thank you, Lee Ann, and thank you, Lori.
Hi Lee Ann, by the way.
So, 0 to 1, I'm not going to go and look at your comments for a bit so I can really
explain it.
0 – asleep; 10 – you're blowing the fuse.
What people have found is that the learning zone, the zone that we are most attentive,
most focused, is kind of between a 4 and a 6.
So for 2, deep asleep; we're sluggish on the couch watching a show, watch another show;
no learning really occurs.
If in effect we're stressed and we have a deadline to meet, and "Oh my God, oh my
God; nothing works" and it spikes up to 7 and an 8, and even a 9, at that point we
make mistakes.
We write email that should never have gone out.
We know what that looks like.
We make mistakes.
We cannot fully focus.
Multitasking occurs in 7, 8, 9 zone, hence people are now saying multitasking is highly
overrated.
So, 0 – asleep, 10 – blow the fuse; 4, 5, and 6 – major learning zones.
So how do we get into them?
Ideally, we want to hover kind of between a 4, 5, and 6 all day long.
So think about it.
And this comes from something called the Alert Program.
You can look that up if you want to.
They invented this kind of a scale.
Like you wake up in the morning and you need a cup of coffee or a cup of tea to even get
from that 1 or 2 up to processing.
And then you eat your cereal or something high sugar, and you spike a little above that.
So you get a lot done but it's a little jiggydy.
And then you go back down because you got a sugar crush and now you're super hungry
and you can't focus because you're hypoglycemic.
And then you eat a donut to jack that back up and so you go like this.
But you don't really live in this zone.
So if that makes sense to you, give me some kind of "Done that"; thumbs up, that means;
because I've been there.
Stress occurs, your child calls with a huge emergency and your stress goes up, and then
you feel really tired and you go back down.
But you don't – this are the days where you say, "My day just ran away with me".
You didn't get done half of what you wanted to get done.
(Okay, great for thumbs up.)
That is what we want to fix both in ourselves and with our horses.
So in like Denise's case, she was talking about her horse being, I think it was cutting
or some cow work, and you were standing and standing and standing; alertness level goes
down, your muscles get cold, you feel sluggish, and all of a sudden you got to go and run
after the cow.
Now, it has to spike above this really lovely central zone.
Think about you're at a horse show and you have a tool that keeps; helps your horse to
be consistent in this middle zone – not deep asleep, and not spiked up.
Your horse will always be ready to go.
And that's kind of the goal and it's not – I'm not a horse show person anymore.
I don't go to events.
But what if that was on a trail; what if you noticed, if you learned to notice when your
horse is spiking up or going down; what if you knew how to regulate not just your own
energy but the input through these three senses to get your horse back to that place of attention,
focus, and calmness?
A 4, I always equate to, I'm sitting with a friend and having coffee; kind of calmly
relaxed.
A 5 is probably what I feel right now – really focused, paying attention to you, excited
to get you engaged.
A 6 maybe something that's more task-oriented – I got to finish this video editing or
I'm going to write this article.
Anything below the coffee and above the article writing, isn't really such a desirable state.
So, I'm going to take a little break.
"Ah, that would be wonderful", Gail says.
Yeah, that would be great.
So let's go dive into – we're 12 minutes into it already – how do we do this?
And again, I'm extrapolating from things that people to children and now adults.
So you got to go play with me on this.
So here are some examples.
I'm going to give people examples and then I'm going see if I can generate a horse
example but I would love for you to type in with new ideas.
We're really co-creating this new material if you want.
So let's say you're stressed and you need some perking up.
Some sensory ideas, what would that be?
What could you do to perk up, other than having the donut.
That jacks you right; so what you have to be careful with the alerting is not sending
you right across the learning zone into destruction.
So what can you do?
So if we're looking at all the elements first, all the senses first, let's start
with smell.
Let's say you're a little – okay, Lori – "Exercise, movement"; perfect.
That was not smell but it was perfect.
Okay.
So what would exercise be, Lori?
Exercise is actually a cool one because it's movement so it activates the vestibular system.
So I can go both ways.
What type of exercise would be calming?
Patti – "Walking"; excellent.
What is walking?
Is it waking up or is it calming down?
Or can it be both?
If I'm too sleepy and I'm on the couch, and I finally turn the TV off and I go for
a walk.
Right, exactly, Lori – "it depends where you're at"; it creates alertness.
If in effect I had a really stressful day and a whole bunch of stuff went wrong, my
walk may calm me down.
And that's because the vestibular system can do both.
Excellent.
Let me see, there was one.
Oh Gail – "If I'm stressed, I need to be brought down", so how are you being brought
down?
What do you do to get yourself down?
And I'm not talking about liquor.
What is a healthy way to use these senses?
For example, I'm going to give you some hints – the mouth and the mandibular joint;
right here, that looks really stupid on camera, has a lot of proprioceptive sensors.
The mouth is full of it.
What could you do and what do people do to calm themselves down?
They eat.
In particular, sticky things because the stickiness – yes, chewing gum, exactly Lori.
The stickiness activates the proprioceptive sense in the jaw.
Versus something that goes easily down.
So let's play with this.
What could you give your horse both to activate and to calm?
You can give your horse actually food that is kind of exciting, that has a fresh flavor,
that may be a little lemony, a little weird.
That would get it up.
Anything chewy, a carrot – you topped the test, right?
I don't really know.
That's a really good point.
Is a carrot going up because it's kind of juicy and it generates something like it gives
sensory input?
Or, does it actually calm down?
My sense is and I don't know if we can get that precise, but my sense is that it's
more chewy it would be, more calming, so something with molasses?
I don't know.
Again, it's playtime here.
I don't know.
But chewing in itself is a really calming activity.
An apple might actually be a little activating.
It's juicy and a little sour, and who knows?
It may also be…
Okay, if a horse is stressed, do we want it to go up?
My horse is hyper at feeding time.
That's a little different issue.
Feeding time, because our horses aren't free fed in general, they get anxious because
they're hungry.
So that's a little different.
But… peanut butter – but if you were to use food as a reward, like as a Sensory Diet
tool, so that's different from feeding your hay, then maybe different, peanut butter,
something chewy may actually calm your horse down.
Now, horses we know don't eat unless they're really, really stressed.
So if your horse is really up there and you're trying to give it a carrot, isn't going
to happen.
But you can use it as a preventive possibly?
"I'm noticing he's getting just a little anxy.
I'm about to see, he's about to lose it" but he's still with you; peanut butter,
something chewy, something molasses, try maybe it's a carrot.
The chewing itself may be the calming effect.
And, horsemen have known this for a long time.
They just don't know why that is.
Now you do.
How about other – so the proprioceptive sense is also in your muscles and in your
joints; so a compaction of joints against each other.
With children, we call this heavy work.
We have them lift books.
In my therapy practice, I used to put weights underneath little wheelbarrows that they would
have to push.
So heavy pushing through deep sand; huge proprioceptive input.
That's why kids that have hyperactivity issues which is actually a 2 lower level of
alertness, self-medicate by being so active.
They stimulate their feet.
"Weighted vest"; give me a second, Lori.
That is actually having to do with touch.
That's perfect.
Let's just get there.
The weighted vest actually is both for touch and impact on the muscles.
So, how does that relate to a horse?
I think that, and I haven't had time to really look at this.
I will do this in more depth.
Linda Tellington Jones has quite a bit of these movements with your hand that are deep
activators, that are really soothing.
They stimulate what would be weight.
You could, if it's cold, put a couple of heavy blankets on your horse.
Now again, make sure it doesn't get heated from underneath.
But that might be super soothing like we put it on a child that has a meltdown.
We put heavy, heavy blankets or weighted vest.
A mattress – you could help your horse feel its joints more by having to balance.
So there's the vestibular and the proprioceptive on an old mattress.
The inputs into the joints are much greater on an uneven wobbly surface than it would
be on a really rough or just a sand surface.
So here's an example.
I don't know if I told you this last week.
But when I worked at a school; I think I did – Episcopalian school and so when they went
to chapel, they sat on these hard benches.
Afterwards, they came down the stairs and many of them tumbled.
So if you translate that, if we just put them in normal sand areas and they're used to
that, they don't get any more input into these joints.
Think about all of these little joints in the horse's foot.
If we could activate them – the knee, the shoulder, the top of the scapular; that is
really soothing.
Now at a horse show, I don't know if you can walk them to a mattress.
But there's possibly a way that you could add some pressure to the hoof or you can do
the Tellington Jones like lift up the leg and do some stretches.
Anything that gives the horse more of a sense of its joints is definitely soothing.
So very good; you guys are really participating.
Because again, we have to generate this ourselves, right?
There is really not a lot of research on this.
I'm wondering around – again, with the taste, is there possibly something sour that
changes from a different…
I don't know.
You guys play with this.
Vision – So your horse is visually, totally stimulated like at a horse show or it's
windy and everything is flapping.
What could you do like how can you use vision as a calming agent?
Short of blindfolding but could you put them away for a moment, in just a dark space?
They often, when they need it, they turn into a corner to just stop the stimulation.
That can be really calming.
It's not part of the three great ones but it has, hearing.
I saw at a horse show especially around L.A. where it gets really noisy, riders put cotton
into their horses' ears.
And yes, it's also the flies.
But think about the flies, what are they doing?
They're providing a whole bunch of irritating light touch.
It activates their alertness system.
So by putting something into a horse's ear, you regulate (My hair is really messy today)
– you regulate sound and there's the tactile issues from flies and bugs.
Oh, a fly mask, these riding fly masks, rather than have your horse deal with all this little
irritation, can you prevent it by putting a riding fly mask on?
Ah yes, touch.
There are two different types of touches.
If you actually go against your hair very lightly – everybody do it for a second – just
go take your arm, go against the grain of the hair very, very lightly.
Do you feel how it's activating?
It's strange, right?
It's almost a little irritating after a while.
Now take your hand and press it down on your arm in the direction of your hair.
It's calming.
And that's what Lori was referring to weighted vest.
It calms.
Now go back.
So, how can we – horse has a huge surface of skin and hair.
How could you use both – "hey buddy, it's time to wake up"; is there possibly some
light, little something that you can do?
Like a little butterfly over the skin or – "oh boy this was a lot and I'm seeing my guy
is losing it.
I'm going to give him deep touch, deep pressure".
I don't have the answers but I hope that you can see what's possible.
Yes, it almost tickles going against the grain.
It's weird.
Now, if you're falling asleep, trust me, or you're in the car and you've been like
second L.A. traffic for a couple of hours, do this, and it wakes you up.
So, it's really thinking – "Okay, what do I usually do to calm my horse down?"
I talk to it.
Well, now that you know the power houses which is vestibular and proprioceptive, and touch,
you realize auditory isn't the power house.
That doesn't mean not speaking soothingly helps.
But it is another input.
Sound doesn't have as big a…
The auditory nerve is not as easy regulator.
Any sound creates input.
Let's see what Patti says.
"Calm to singing"; okay so again, you play with it.
What is waking them up?
What is calming them down?
So singing, soothing, melodic; so rhythm in itself is the calming mechanism.
We all know that.
So my horse acts up.
My horse gets scared.
I'm going to ride in circles.
It's not just the circle even though that's great.
It is also the repetition of the circle; a figure eight and a figure eight and a figure
eight.
It's the sameness.
It's the sameness that's really important.
Now, let me see what Gail says, "My horse loves to be touched, loves a curry when I
brush"; okay.
Now, there's also individual differences – each horse if you really pay attention
to this, will tell which brushes are their favorites and which aren't.
There's actually a sensory integration protocol, a Sensory Diet for children with issues that
has to do with brushing.
But like I have some of my horse have this, even though they're mustangs, have kind
of a thoroughbred-ish really thin skin and a curry comb drives them crazy.
But the soft, I have these German brushes only like this thick, and it has amazing hair,
and I glide that over their coat and they go like [makes a sound].
Some others love, like you said, love the curry comb with the shedding.
Some of mine are totally cool on taking actually the main brush and rubbing it over their bodies.
Some of them go like twitchy over it.
It's not so much about what tool you use but you're starting to become aware of what
does what to a horse, to each horse.
And as you create that Sensory Diet for that particular horse, you will be able to help
it in a preventive way to stay in this alert, calm, attentive space.
Now, let's jump before we close up, a little bit to you.
You see what time it is.
We don't want to get overtime.
Oh yeah; a little bit to you.
And that is, can you also identify what is soothing for you, what is activating for you?
So I'm thinking horse show, horse meltdown.
In all reality you both kind of have a semi-meltdown.
It's hard to be in horse shows.
I've been there.
It's sound and your adrenaline and your excitement and your fear, and your fear of
failure, and all that emotional crap that comes with any kind of public event, activates
you.
Now since with your presence and you on the horse also has any of that activating or calming
presence on your horse, what can you do better than staying in this place?
So for example, you could share a few things.
One of those large toy balls or exercise balls but put something over or they don't blast
according to our experience, you could sit on it and rock a little bit.
Rocking is really soothing to the vestibular system; really, really good.
Let's see what Lori says, "self talk"; yeah.
But if we're staying with the senses and we're staying out of our heads in our body,
then what else can we do?
So you can rock on this ball.
You can use the same ball to put deep, long, wide circles on your horse.
Because of its big surface, it touches a lot of the horse at the same time.
So that's really soothing; circular is soothing.
Let me see what Rose says, "controlled breathing".
Aha!
So controlled breathing is a really – remember when I said rhythmic – breathing does that
because of the proprioceptive inside of your body.
Deep breath activates the system.
You do that rhythmically.
So possibly, there's a way to get your horse to breathe deeply rhythmically.
So maybe your figure eights are now at a trot.
Allow your horse to deeply breathe.
Maybe lighten the girth or cinch to allow more deep breath.
Maybe it's climbing up a short hill.
So let's say you're at an event and there's a little hill.
A hill would activate this deep breathing.
It would activate the proprioceptive sense in the feet.
There's an uneven, weird surface.
And it activates the vestibular system at the same time because there's more balancing
required.
I bet you it's a highly, highly effective way for calming your horse down.
Let's see, Gail, "I rock on my desk and I also look for nature for calmness; looking
at trees, listening to the wind, walking in nature".
You know this about yourself, realize that your horse is no different; no different.
Now, the only thing we need to be careful with is imposing what's calming to us on
the horse.
That's not what it is.
What might be calming to you may be very stressful for your horse.
So walking in nature may be a calming activity for you but your horse isn't used to being
in nature.
It's kind of like a stable horse, sensory-deprived its entire life; it won't like walking in
nature for a while.
But it may enjoy some really boring figure eight circles.
The nice thing about figure eights or circles in general, is that it also gives input into
the muscles and joints because they are being used differently depending on what side you
are.
So let's say you travel on a circle on the right, the right shoulder, and the right hip
gets more input.
As you switch, the left shoulder, the left hip gets more input.
The intercostals muscles on the off side get more stretched.
So it's not just movement as we hear from the trainers.
It is why movement is so calming.
So I hope you learned something today.
I really appreciate them; really, really super active conversation that we had, and we'll
continue this.
I will build an entire program, not just on that, but I will combine liberty and obstacle
courses with this knowledge because I think I know that they'll be incredibly fun to
not just walk into an obstacle course for the heck of it, and because we flood our horses
with senses.
That is by the way, the police way of doing it – they overload the horse until the horse
has to tolerate everything that gets to it.
And from a police standpoint, I totally understand.
From our standpoint, we can build obstacle courses that are therapy courses for our horses.
We'll get to know what's soothing to them; what they love, what they don't like; what
makes them playful and what brings them back to their learning zone.
And it is an experiment.
I'm not stating this huge theory but we can add that to something that already exists
which is liberty, agility, obstacle courses, trail trials; all of that.
So, I'm excited to present that more to you as time allows.
That's the issue.
But we are building our course right now with these ideas in mind.
So we'll continue it on our Facebook, in our Facebook group as a discussion.
Again, for whoever hasn't joined yet, it's at facebook.com/groups/harmonywithhorses,
and we'll continue and we'll compile ideas as you are experimenting with what's soothing
and what's activating.
Great!
I'm really glad that was a lot of good info.
I really had fun because it allows me to draw from something I already know and I can bring,
I think, agility and agility competition which isn't my thing, but the obstacle course
into a new light as something that helps our horses heal, our horses get to this place
where they love living at which is calm, assertive, attentive, focused, and not fearful.
And the same goes for you [blows a kiss].
Bye for now!
Next week, I think I will actually switch.
I was thinking about really doing a real spiritual talk.
I don't think that half an hour warrants that.
I think it will be a webinar.
But, yesterday we really had a great discussion around standing up, not just from a leadership
perspective in terms of our horses, but standing up to authorities, riding instructors when
things don't feel right.
And this will be the discussion for next week because I think it's very, very important
that you keep being grounded in who you are.
Thank you, Lee Ann; and I'll announce next week's call, next week's talk, of course.
And I'll see you over in the group.
Bye!
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