{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson","title":"Ep 8: Sofia Valenca - Valenca Equestrian Academy, Portugal","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":8392,"description":"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...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/edefuo9BicUw7iv3tBYu0A0WPDz35rwksjCWzqzh4lQ/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzQwOTg5LzE2ODIz/MzM0MzYtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}