[LISA LEWIS] The Am I Ok? Podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Faith Fringes, the Holistic Counseling Podcast, and Beta Male Revolution, go to the website, www.practiceofthepractice.com/network. Welcome to the Am I Ok? Podcast, where you will discover that being highly sensitive is something to embrace and it’s actually a gift you bring to the world. We will learn together how to take ownership of your high sensitivity, so you can make positive changes in your life, in the lives of others, and it’s totally okay to feel this way. I’m your host, Lisa Lewis. I’m so glad you’re here for the journey. Welcome to today’s episode of the Am I Ok? Podcast. I’m your host, Lisa Lewis. Thank you so much for tuning in. I would like to remind my listeners that I offer a free eight-week email course titled Highly Sensitive People. My email course provides weekly tools that help you feel more whole in a world isn’t exactly made for us and I show you how your sensitivity can be seen as a unique gift and how many others are just like you. To find out more about my email course, please go to my website, amiokpodcast.com. The warmer months ahead with spring in the air. For me, spring means new possibilities on the horizon, which is very exciting to me. If you just look outside, buds are blooming on the trees, flowers are starting to bloom, the sound of birds are singing in the yard. Warmer days and longer days are just ahead. I feel like I’m coming hibernation just like animals come out of hibernation after a long winter now. Spring can mean new awakenings, awakening to new insights for yourself to help you grow and stretch in ways that you are that you have never experienced before so you can live the life that you came to live. Today’s guest expert is going to share how to do just that with a help by a four-legged animal. Today’s guest is Angela Dunning. Angela is an equine facilitated learning practitioner and a writer supporting people’s personal growth and healing working both one on one and with small groups. Angela specializes in working with adult women, HSPs and horse lovers seeking to recover from chronic low self-esteem, lack of confidence and who have challenges living their true potential and truth. Angela also mentors and supports other practitioners. She’s a passionate writer and published her first book, The Horse Leads the Way, in 2017. Welcome to the show, Angela. [ANGELA DUNNING] Thank you so much, Lisa. It’s a real pleasure to be here. [LISA] Wonderful to have you here. I can’t wait to get started to hear all about what you’re going to share with us and your experiences. I was looking, I just want to say I was looking at your website and I was looking at all your horse pictures. Are those the horses that you work with? [ANGELA] Sadly, no, no. There might be a few in there that I’ve worked with in the past, but some of them are just really beautiful stock images and some are some of my own photos. I like taking photos of horses myself. [LISA] Oh yes. I was wondering, I’m like, are those her photos on and photos? We were talking before we got started that you are in England, so welcome. I’m in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show in the states. Glad to have you here. Of course you can listen all over the world. [ANGELA] It’s nighttime here. [LISA] It’s morning here. The beauty of technology. I love it. [ANGELA] Yes. [LISA] How did you find out about being at HSP and working with horses in this way? [ANGELA] Well, this goes right back for me to about 2003, 2004, and I was going through a really tricky period in my life. I was in my early thirties and I’d been doing work that whilst very rewarding and very worthwhile, it was very challenging, very stressful working with very vulnerable people, disadvantaged communities. Eventually, that plus what I’ll talk about in a minute took its toll and I ended up with some back problems and started to get depressed. So after struggling on for a while, I decided to take some long-term leave and while I was doing that, I for the first time started to explore who I really was, what was going on for me, why was I struggling? Why was I finding these jobs so draining? That was my first interaction with exploring who I am and seeking a healing path for myself. I tried various different things like some counseling, some therapy and then one day I was reading a, I think it was a spiritual self-help magazine and I’d read it completely, turned it over. On the back cover, there was this whole page article asking, are you a highly sensitive person? I’d never heard of this term before, but something absolutely drew my eyes to it. I started reading down the checklist of all of Elaine Aarons, ways to identify if you might be an HSP. I sat there with a pen and ticked every single one and it floored me. It was like a dual experience of an enormous sense of relief and a light bulb moment, but also a really quite painful realization that if this is truly who I am innately, no wonder I’ve struggled so much with normal things, normal life, normal world, especially the jobs that I’d been doing and particularly my family and my upbringing as well. So that was my starting point. From that point on, I went on to the internet and just started to do some research. Back then there was really nothing happening, especially in the UK and Europe. So I was looking at websites in America and I fairly quickly came upon a life coach who specialized in helping HSPS. She did this lovely personal coaching program that I did with her. We did it over the telephone over a number of weeks, and it was that plus reading, starting to read Elaine Aaron’s books. I read the first one, The Highly Sensitive Person, then The Highly Sensitive Person in Love that also fortuitously brought the horses back into my life because in addition to this period of doing these jobs and ending up not in a good place, I’d had a long period where I hadn’t had horses in my life. It was about 16 years and I’d always been around horses. Particularly in my teens I was with horses all the time, riding, my first job was working with horses. So I’d had this long, long period of these animals that are so essential to me not being in my life and I realized that that was really adding to the stress and the feeling of not feeling like I was in a good place, not being happy. But anyway, reading one of Elaine’s books, in the book, there were these two pages where she was quoting actually the woman who I eventually trained with, who was talking about horses as being what she called highly sensitive masters. And Elaine was weaving in what this woman Linda was writing about, about how horses are innately sensitive and how we humans, particularly high sensitive humans can learn so much from observing and interacting with horses who are innately highly sensitive mammals. [ANGELA] So those two things came together all within a matter of a few months. Indeed the life coach I was working with the very first session said, what are you most passionate about? I just blurted out horses. She said to me, she said, “Oh, I know this. I’ve heard about this woman doing some really cool work in Arizona.” That ended up being the woman that I trained with whose name is Linda Kahana. So it was all very fortuitous and synchronistic and yes, just a really special, and it’s really nice to talk about it again, a really special period for me in my life, because it was a real pivotal turning point. It changed my life 360 degrees on every level, personally, professionally relationships. But I think two things, I would say mostly what it did was helped me understand who I am innately and therefore how to take care of myself, given that I’m an HSP. Secondly, that I have this true calling in life, which is to partner with these highly sensitive animals and work with them in different ways in order to work with people and help people learn about themselves and heal and develop really healthy tools to help them look after themselves and have better relationships. [LISA] Oh, I love that story. It’s really exquisite how you came to that, I guess that realization and that turning point, as you said in your life. Sometimes we have to go in a place that’s really not so pleasant or uncomfortable in our lives to make a change. I just love how you came to it. I hear so many people that they see, they just take that HSP test and it just turns their life around. [ANGELA] Yes. [LISA] So why are horses so helpful particularly for high sensitives? [ANGELA] Well, I mean, there’s lots of reasons. I mean, horses are like all herd animals and animals that are preyed upon in the wild deer antelope, zebra horses, any of these types of mammals, they’re all highly, highly sensitive. They absolutely have to be because their physiology has adapted to with their survival. That’s their primary goal in life, is survival. So they are exquisitely sensitive to everything that goes on in their environment and that everything that goes on within their herd, whether we’re talking about horses or other herd animals. So they are innately sensitive, they are already several rungs up from us. I’m talking about wild horses here. Although domesticated horses are still extremely sensitive, but a lot of them have had to adapt to the conditions that they’re kept in. So they’re not as reactive and not as sensitive as wild horses, but the unique thing about horses as compared to other herd mammals is that we humans and horses have this ancient, thousands of years old relationship with horses. We go way, way, way, way back and they’ve been instrumental in our development and civilization as as a species. So unlike these are the types of herd and animals we have this unique, longstanding relationship with these animals, whether we’re talking about modern day equestrianism or if you look back over the history, just how closely humans and horses have evolved together really. Horses have helped us develop to get to where we are. We wouldn’t have cars and modern day transport without having had the horses or indeed agriculture wouldn’t have developed in the way without the horses being willing to take up that role. So there’s a really unique relationship there, which means that it’s an awful lot easier for us to dive in at a much deeper level with our domesticated horses and try and explore, okay, now, perhaps we don’t want to ride them. We don’t want to compete them or use them for these jobs that they had in the past, but now we can be around them in a very different way. So the woman that I trained with whose name is Linda Kahana, this is the woman in Arizona, and there’s many people now who have done this work, she was one of the originators of it. What she was bringing out was how horses can show us so much about ourselves. Horses can reveal to us what we are truly feeling in each moment. So they’re like authenticity barometer. If you like, you approach a horse or you are around a horse and it can tell you through its body language and whether it wants to approach you or not exactly what state you are in. As I’m sure a lot of us humans don’t really often know a lot of the time exactly how we’re feeling or we’ve adapted through our own upbringing to mask what we’re feeling, but the horses bring this out in us. They reveal it to us. So they’re these very, very sensitive beacons that we can be around. By observing how they behave around us, we can learn what it is we’re really feeling emotionally, what we’re feeling in our body. We can start to work on, am I aligned? Am I saying, what I’m doing is that matching up with what I’m really feeling inside, what my physiology, what’s going on in my nervous system, what emotions are going through me, what thoughts? So they have this really incredible ability to help us bring all of that back into alignment, mainly because they won’t cooperate when we’re out of alignment. It’s very obvious when we are out of alignment. So for example, a horse won’t approach a client who is in a particular state, or they might be near the client and then they’ll walk away or they’ll purposefully turn and look at the client and come towards them the moment that client gets, or that person gets that connection to what they’re really feeling. So that’s, and there’s a very general small snapshot there. There’s lots more to it, but what I found for myself, and then when I started practicing for highly sensitive people in particular, they do all of these things. My experience again, for myself and clients I’ve worked with, it just feels like all the things that the horses can teach us about, like how to harness, if you like as a metaphor, their sensitivity, so that they can thrive, not just survive because our domesticated horses don’t need to worry about survival generally, but they can show us how they use that sensitivity for their gain, for their benefit and how they use it to connect with each other as a herd how they keep each other safe, how they themselves relate to their own feelings and their own needs and their own physiology. All of the things that a lot of people particularly HSB struggle with. There’s so many other things as well boundaries, that’s a whole topic in itself. Again, something that me personally and the HSPs I’ve worked with seem to really, really struggle with. That life coach that I’ve worked with, I’d never really heard the word boundary until she started talking about it, that that was an indicator of the sort of upbringing that I had had and the life I’d led up until that point and why I was so depleted really, I had no idea about self-care, about energetic, sensitivity, about picking things up from other people and indeed from animals as well. So all of those things, learning how to look after yourself, learning how to ask for the personal space you need, learning how to say no and set boundaries. All of that was an absolute revelation to me. So I’ve seen it so many times with all the clients I work with, whether they regard themselves as high sensitive or not. [LISA] What does that look like when you’re working with a client and the horses and as a facilitator between the client and the horses, are you asking the client questions, like, what are they noticing in their body, or how do you help them come to those realizations? Or it just comes like intuitively, or maybe it’s both? [ANGELA] I think it’s both of those things. I mean, the way I work, the way I was trained, we do, so I’ll do some preparation work with the client first, before they go near the horses. So we’ll do like a check-in what are they feeling in their body, what’s going on for them in their life and have a general sort of stage of preparation. Sometimes that can take a long time. Sometimes actually that will take the whole session because of whatever’s going on. We might not even get in with one of the horses, but often that’s just a brief check in and if they are in a very stressed or dysregulated stage I’ll take them through some breathing and grounding exercises, take them through a body scan, see what’s going on in their body. That’s a really key point because being around the horses, we have to be connected to our body. We have to be able to tune in and check in with what’s going in on our body because they are doing that all of the time anyway, regardless of whether we are or not. So it’s a huge help, both in terms of your own safety and wellbeing, but also in terms of creating a relationship and a connection to one or several of the horses. That’s what we’ll do to start with. Then we’ll go and approach the horse or herd of horses. Then it really depends on what’s going on in the client as to what shape the session will take. This is the way I work anyway. The whole time what I’m doing as the facilitator is I’m doing two things simultaneously. I’m keeping checking in with the client and observing what’s going on with them, sensing into my own body as well for any changes in my body and using my intuition. But at the same time, I’m keeping one eye on the horses the whole time, because it’s how they react from the moment that client is in the space, in that session space, that that’s where the information will really come from because they are so much more sensitive than we are. So I’ll be watching what the horses are doing because it’s not uncommon to have a person and they say, I’m feeling fine and the horses won’t come anywhere near them. In fact, they might walk down the other end of the field or something like that. I’ve had people stand literally in front of horses and they say, oh, I think that horse is looking at me and making a connection when in fact the horse isn’t, they are tuning out. The horse is tuning out because the person is somewhat tuned out or a little bit dissociated, maybe. So it’s really very much working with the person with their body and through the body, what they are feeling, what emotions are coming up and, of course, linking in cognitively as well what are they thinking about, particularly what intrusive thoughts they have. Another common theme that I would say, I’m sure you feel this too, with the people you work with is HSPs do tend to have quite virulent inner critics in my experience, a lot of negative self-talk and lack of confidence. All of that, believe it or not, the horses pick up on that, because that creates this disjointed feeling in our physiology and, of course the horses sense that, they sense it energetically. [LISA] How would you turn that around, that negative inner critic? Can you give us an example of how a horse would help someone turn that around? Like, oh, maybe I have an aha moment. Oh, I see what I’m doing or I’m thinking and okay, what do I need to do different so I don’t think this way? [ANGELA] So examples might be, the person might say, oh, that horse doesn’t like me. They’re not coming towards me or they’re not looking at me. So then I’ll talk to the client then about what that message is like for them and how often does that come up and does it connect to anything else in their life? We’ll talk about that and then we’ll work in with the body too and then the moment they realize, oh yes, I’m doing that again or I have a tendency to do that, it’s almost instantaneous that the change in the horse’s behavior, it’s like the horse will suddenly look over at them. Like the person has fully materialized. They’ll start to show more interest in them. Because it’s that moment when you get that, even just that moment of self-awareness, it creates the congruency in the body and the nervous system and therefore the energy field of that person. And the horse is like, the horse is relaxed again. It’s like, they can say, it’s like they’re saying to themselves, yes, we can relax now. This person makes a bit more sense to us. We feel a bit safer around them. So it’s really a combination of talking that through with the client in conjunction with what’s going on in their body and then noticing, and then talking through the horse’s feedback. I do that very openly with people. So I’ll say, do you notice how even the slightest change in body posture or language, or even the twitch of an ear of the horse can be a real indication that they are suddenly now tuning in more to the person. So it can be very subtle, or it can be very, very obvious. [LISA] So once the person starts to tune into themselves, I just want to make sure I’m getting this right, they start to tune themselves like, oh, look, maybe I’m thinking this way, it’s negative or I’m thinking positive. The horse is like, oh, she’s now getting it. Now I can come to her or I can make a connection with her? [ANGELA] Yes. It’s like in that moment, when that intrusive thought comes in, the connection is broken between the person and the horse. You see this very clearly if the person is doing something quite active with the horse, maybe they’re asking them to move around, either leading the horse or trying to get the horse to move away from them. The moment that thought comes in that horse will stop or they’ll pretend to eat the grass. They’ll do anything. The connection is broken. It’s very, very, very, very clear. [LISA] I can see how this happens in our personal relationship. [ANGELA] Yes, exactly. I was just thinking that too, you’re talking with somebody and you have that intrusive thought and it blocks you. It blocks you. If we can feel that, even if a horse is 30 foot away, they are feeling that. Absolutely. That goes back to what I said earlier, they are, even though we’ve domesticated horses for hundreds and hundreds of years, their biology is the same and they are still exquisitely sensitive to everything in their environment. For them, the bottom line is this potential predator that’s in my environment, what’s the intention of that predator? Are they friendly? Are they really clear? Are they being honest with me? You would never get a dishonest lion walking through a field. The lion is either I’m looking to eat or it’s I’ve just eaten. I’m totally fine. The horses don’t bat an eyelid either. But with a person we are so mixed up. We can come in and pretend that we’re fine, but there’s a whole load of stuff going on that is telling the horse that actually, they’re not quite sure if they can trust us. So they’ll keep their distance. [LISA] Wow. I’m just picturing this and how powerful it is. It’s like they’re just helping. I just hear like they’d be helping the person, just get all this stuff out of the way so you can really just truly be yourself. That leads me to my next question, so that like the crux of the work with horses is about finding and living from our true self. That’s something that HSPs, particularly struggle with. So how do do this? How do they help someone find their true self? [ANGELA] I was thinking, as you were talking about that, one of the most powerful ways is how they respond when we get in touch with what we’re really feeling. Because for me, when I talk about a true self, I don’t just mean something finite like a true purpose, a true calling for me. Finding and living our true self is about being true to ourselves in every moment and in every way. And a big part of my own journey and a lot of the work I’ve done with people has been around getting in touch with what we’re really feeling, and then speaking that, expressing that somehow, and asking for what you need and what you don’t need. Again, this goes back to what we were just speaking about with the horses in terms of how they detect whether we are aligned and authentic in one moment or not. So one of the big things that the horses do is they respond very positively when we do have a sudden connection to what we’re really feeling. That work I was talking about connecting through the body and what are you thinking, what are you feeling, bringing all that into alignment usually leads to tears. It usually leads to an emotional breakthrough, and the moment those tears come up, the horses make a beeline for us. It’s just, I’ve seen it hundreds of times, and it still astonishes me and just is so moving because when we cry and the more we cry, they will come closer to us and they offer us total, just total acceptance in that moment no matter what we’re crying about. They don’t need the history or the story, but the feeling, the release and that feeling, and there’s lots of conjecture about what’s actually going on in that moment for the horses, why they do this. But I really feel for me, the bottom line is it’s because the person has fully come into their true self in that moment, the defenses have fallen away, the pretend has fallen away. That trying to be something that they’re not has fallen away, and they are raw and often very vulnerable. That’s the moment when the power of this work with horse really hits its mark, and it’s really extraordinary. [LISA] Do they come in, so to be next to you, to, like they’re witnessing your, I guess your healing process? Is it also for like, just a connection in some way? [ANGELA] Yes, I think it is. It’s like, there’s this resonance that takes place. I mean you know yourself when you have a good cry, everything changes; your whole body, your whole physiology changes and your whole nervous system resets. Of course, they feel that at a very, very deep physiological level. I think partly, and people do surmise this that they have some form of release themselves. I mean, horses don’t cry. Animals don’t cry. It’s only humans who can cry. But they release things in different ways. They release them in very, very physical ways. They might shutter, they might yawn, they might lie down even. I’ve had that happen with my own horses with me when I was having a major grief cry one day and all three horses lay down with me. Yes, I think it is about connection. They are social herd animals. That’s the other key thing about them. They utterly depend on one another and they have very, very good social relationships. When we are in the mix they include us in that. I think in those moments, that’s when they can really, really get close to us. They feel completely safe and we feel completely safe. For people who’ve had difficulty trusting people, because a lot of people who come to do the work with horses, that’s the reason they find being around people so difficult. So you have to be careful as the facilitator because you are the human one and they’re coming for these sessions with these animals. So you have to be very, very sensitive yourself but when the person has that experience with the horse, they can start to trust. They can trust themselves. It’s okay to reveal who I really am. It’s okay to show my emotions. It’s okay to let down my guard. It’s okay not to worry about what I look like and all of those things. [LISA] Yes, just to really just be yourself, I hear, which can feel really strange if you are not used to just being yourself and connecting to yourself in a different way. [ANGELA] Yes. [LISA] Without all those defenses. [ANGELA] But I think in, I’ve talked about the emotional side of things and the other sort of area where they really help us step into our true self is through really positively encouraging us to step into our more confident, more powerful and into our potential more. So again, when we’re interacting with them or if we’re working with them, they will help us find skills and energy and abilities that we didn’t even know were lying dormant inside of us. But it’s like they have a way of unearthing those in these sessions. So people will find out really amazing things about themselves, “I didn’t know I could do that or I didn’t know, perhaps I could be a leader or I didn’t know I could be authoritative like that or motivate somebody.” So there’s a whole field within this field of helping people learn things like that, develop leadership skills and so on. So yes, in terms of, so reaching and finding your true potential and finding lost energy as well, energy that’s been stuck and lost for a long time, they can really — [LISA] It’s quite a transformation. [ANGELA] Yes. So it’s like, they coax it out of us. They’re very positively, they want us to be our truest fullest selves. Again, that comes from their feedback. So when we’re not being like that again, they sense that as a bit of incongruence and they’ll, their interest will tail off a little bit. [LISA] The question I hear too, is like, do I even want to be my full potential self, whatever that looks like? That can be scary and that thing that we do, like self sabotage can get in the way. It sounds like that’s the part where they they coax you like, yes, come on just a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. [ANGELA] Yes, yes. [LISA] So what is the bigger picture of your work? [ANGELA] That’s a good question. Well, I didn’t really know this consciously when I got into it. I think it was there unconsciously in me, but the longer I’ve been involved in it and the process that I went through researching and writing the book that I wrote nearly five years ago now was really about, well, helping people, what we’ve talked about, be more their true selves. But I think what really motivates and drives me is helping humans and animals and humans in the natural world understand each other and connect at a much deeper level. I think that’s always been my path in this lifetime. It comes very easily to me. It’s a very innate part of who I am. But a lot of people are very cut off from, they’re cut off from their own nature, their own, in a animal, if you like and their own natural instincts and all the things we’ve talked about. They’re very cut off from the natural world. Even those, who I work with a lot of people who are life longer Equestrians, horse owners or whatever, but what I’m really committed to is helping everybody see particularly the horses in a different way, trying to really understand the horses rather than just see them through our own human lens. So seeing the horses as beings in their own right, as sentient beings in their own rights. My work now is absolutely about creating equal partnerships. So I don’t take horses and put them in an arena with a client and say, right, get on with it. The horses have a choice right from the moment we get there as to whether they want to participate or not, and how they participate and which horse is going to work with which client and what they might want to do. If the horse knows at any point, then we honor that and I talk that through with the client or the students. So for me, it’s, I think it’s bringing to consciousness this innate belief and part of my nature of who I am is to bring humans and nature back into balance. Boy, do we all need to really get to grips with that? Sounds like the way the world is. [LISA] That’s something that an HSP loves to do and like one of their gifts. [ANGELA] Yes, yes. [LISA] So what is the most important thing you’d want listeners to take away today, Angela? [ANGELA] I think to address other high sensitives, I mean, there’s lots of things that I could say, but one of the key things I would say would be to get the support. Once you discover that you might be highly sensitive is to get the support that’s out there, because there’s so much now, there’s so many wonderful people like yourselves who work and support highly sensitive people and to find the person, the program, whether it’s with horses or not, that is going to help you connect to who you really are and help you not just survive but thrive. [LISA] I love that, not just survive but thrive in that, like I think all healing modalities, we just want the person to just really thrive in their life. Where can listeners get in touch with you? [ANGELA] So they can go to my website, which is thehorsestruth.co.uk. They can just contact me through that or they can find me with the same name, The Horse’s Truth on Facebook. I’m very active on Facebook. So either of those ways is great. [LISA] Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Angela. [ANGELA] You’re very welcome, Lisa. Thank you so much again for having me and for chatting. It’s been lovely [LISA] Thank you, my listeners for tuning in today. Remember to subscribe, rate and review wherever you get your podcast. To find out more about highly sensitive persons, please visit my website at amiokpodcast.com and subscribe to my free eight-week email course to help you navigate your own sensitivities and to show you that it’s okay not to take on everyone’s problems. This is Lisa Lewis reminding each and every one of you that you are okay. Until next time, be well. Thank you for listening today at Am I Ok? Podcast. If you are loving the show, please rate, review and subscribe to it on your favorite podcast platform. Also, if you’d like to learn how to manage situations as a highly sensitive person, discover your unique gift as a highly sensitive person, and learn how to be comfortable in your own skin, I offer a free eight-week email course called Highly Sensitive People. Just go to amiokpodcast.com to sign up. In addition, I love hearing from my listeners, drop me an email to let me know what is on your mind. You can reach me at lisa@amiokpodcast.com. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want to professional, you should find one.