{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson","title":"Forget the Rulebook: A Kiwi Approach to Equine Assisted Learning | Nik Lewis | EAW 65","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":8438,"description":" ✨ \"It's not the breed, it's the brain.\" – Nik Lewis \nRupert Isaacson speaks with Nik Lewis of Horses R Us NZ, an equine facilitated learning program near Taupo in the Central North Island of New Zealand. For about eight years, Horses R Us has worked with young people and adults, including neurodiverse clients and clients working on social-emotional goals or riding, with no set parameters. As Nik puts it, if they don't know something, they go and find out.\nWhat makes the program distinctive is how little of the session is fixed. Nik describes working with whoever \"rocks in on the day,\" keeping an end goal while letting the route change. Clients stay matched with one horse, each with a plan B horse, and in one story a 29-year-old non-verbal client walks and talks a jumpy Thoroughbred calm, reversing the usual roles of helper and helped. Her horses live in herds outdoors around the clock, and they get their own outlet: Nik and her horses also hunt and jump wire fences.\nThe conversation covers Nik's bareback childhood in rural New Zealand, her path from teacher aide and classroom teacher to burnout in 2015, her EAGALA training, her mentorship with a social worker, and the 2018 leap into running the program full time. It also looks at how Māori tikanga, language, Matariki and Māori stories find their way into sessions, and where story and sense of place could take the work next. If you want to support the show, you can do so at Patreon.\nIf you want to support the show, you can do so at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LongRideHome\n\n🔍 What You'll Learn in This Episode\nHow Nik's \"if we don't know, we go and find out\" approach shapes a program with no set parameters\nWhy Nik links the Kiwi \"number eight wire\" mentality to a flexible, can-do way of working\nWhat Nik sees as the difference between outcome-focused and client-focused work, based on her understanding of RDA\nHow a client and a horse can swap roles, with the client becoming the horse's regulator\nWhy clients stay...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/PuJAXgaKmhfeBRqqEPEATMHDH_c-iN9O1OlaUtqD0-g/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzQwMDI3LzE2ODI0/MjQ0MTQtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}