Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times best selling
author of The Horse Boy, The Long Ride Home, and The Healing Land.
Before I jump in with today's guest, I just want to say a huge
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It really helps us get this work done.
As you might know from my books, I'm an autism dad.
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So without further ado, let's meet today's guest.
Welcome back to Equine Assisted World.
Today, I've got Robin Hood.
That sounds anachronistic, perhaps.
I don't mean a man in tights with a longbow on his back.
I mean, the amazing sister of the amazing Linda Tellington Jones.
Those of you who know about T Touch the Linda Tellington Jones method of
using touch to ameliorate bond with gosh reach and Help with any kind of
horse training And people and dogs and so anyone who doesn't know about
t touch go and type it into google now t touch It's a wonderful thing.
We've been you know Fans of it and practicing it on our own horses and each
other and our dogs for over a decade.
And Linda Tunnington Jones, of course, is a legend within the horse community
and was one of the first people to bring this idea of healing through
horses into the mainstream, really.
Not as many people know about her younger sister.
And Robin and Linda have been working together for many, many, many years.
And A lot of the systemization behind the T Touch method one could
say has, you know, come thanks to this wonderful relationship between
the sisters and Robin's input.
So I wanted to, I wanted to not just talk to Linda.
If you haven't heard our two podcasts with Linda, one on Live Free, Ride
Free, and one here on Equine Assisted World, go click on those links now.
But today I want to go a little deeper into T Touch with Robin.
And look at what are the things that we as equine practitioners need to know.
What can we benefit from in terms of how we approach,
touch, interact with our horses?
How our clients do not just with our horses, but the other social animals
that we have and with each other, we being social animals as well.
There's a lot that we can glean from mentors like Robin.
So even though many of us, of course, hold the well being of the equines we
work with, you know, in the highest of priorities, because we hold them in
that priority, we need to talk to people like Robin and learn as much as we can.
So Robin, thanks so much for coming on the show.
And please tell us who you are and what is T Touch?
What's it all about?
Robyn Hood: That's always a 64, 000 question.
You know, what is T Touch?
So, first of all, it's interesting.
Of course, our family name is Hood and Linda named me actually, I was the second
last to be born and she came home and said, Oh, you have to name this one Robin.
The funny thing is our mother's name was Marion.
So we had made Marion
and
Robyn Hood: I have a brother named John.
So we have little John and made Marion.
And when I was a child, I used to do a lot of.
And I'm a horse showman.
I used to ride two horses from other people.
And one was called fire tech and one was called little John.
So here comes Robin Hood riding for your deck.
So anyway, that was a good laugh for people.
So I've kind of grown up with that.
And, and, you know, it was a little tricky when I was younger, but when
I got married, I chose to keep my own name and I've had the opportunity, you
know, Linda's 14 years older than I am.
And I spent a lot of time when I was young, before I was on
a horse, before I could walk.
When I could walk, she would, like, throw me on a horse bareback and,
you know, slap them on the butt so I'd get cantered into the stable.
My mother was, of course, horrified, but, you know, it's the way it was.
And then Linda left when I was three.
She moved to California.
That was quite hard for me.
And then I started to go to work with her when I was nine.
And I got, would go in the summers and fly to California by myself, which,
you know, back in the day, 1959,
60 was pretty unusual, especially crossing the border.
And I.
I am, I'm so lucky to have have Linda and the thing is, I don't want to be Linda.
And I think that's actually why our relationship works.
I always make this kind of joke and it's not that, you know, she's
kind of the show horse and I'm the workforce and that doesn't mean
she doesn't work, but I really like kind of being behind the scenes and
and supporting what she's doing.
And sometimes.
redirecting her a little bit because she has a lot of ideas that were at
least 20 years ahead of her time.
And, you know, that's the good news and the bad news, you
know, like, like everything.
And so, I did a newsletter for, I started in 83, I think, and I did it till 2017.
Four times a year and about the method and about Linda's travels, which were, I
mean, incredibly, incredibly interesting.
And so I, I really, I love this work.
I love being able to connect with people and their animals, because.
If we, if we can't relate to the people, it's hard to
actually have them help their.
Animals.
And so it's it for me, learning is constantly like, I believe that we
can always make something better.
There's it's not about something is, you know, it has to be like this.
I think we need a framework of what what I've kind of tried
to do is make a baseline.
And then I often say to people that this work is written in sand
rather than written in stone.
And I think that it allows people that they learn the basic techniques
and then they can use that then they can use their intuition or the
feeling and and, and carry on with it.
So that's where I think that's kind of the role that I play.
that I play with Linda.
Rupert Isaacson: What is T Touch exactly?
Robyn Hood: So, T Touch, there, there's the question.
So, I, and I, I actually really prefer in Europe, they call
it more the Tellington method,
and
Robyn Hood: the, because the misnomer is that it's only about touch.
So, T Touch is basically a, a gentle way of communicating with animals and with
interacting with animals that is What I say low stress because every time we do
anything different, there's a certain amount of stress, but it's low stress and
it's really considering how animals learn.
And that's our interest is, is in looking at both the learning.
So we have different components.
There's the observation, which you do.
Ideally, you're doing all the time with your animal, you know,
and what we're looking for is small things, not big things.
We don't want to wait until they shout at us.
We'd rather listen to their whispers.
And, and then of course, there's the body of work known as the Tellington
T Touch, which is a gentle form of hands on communication with your horse.
And there are various techniques that we use that are really easy to learn.
And I think that's one of the things that is, so what's so beautiful about
this work is that you can teach people it in a pretty short period of time.
We also have the groundwork.
And there's, you know, I remember years ago, people were starting
to do body work on horses.
It was a, you know, at the time when we started nearly 50 years ago, it
was considered a little bit odd.
But so what we found is that you could do body work, but if you didn't
take that into mindful movement.
As in the Feldenkrais method, then there was a lot that was missed.
And unfortunately, there's, there's more and more groundwork being done, but
it's some of it actually kind of, takes away from any body work you might have
done because it puts horses in posture.
It's not functional.
And so we're looking for functional posture for helping, helping them
have a different way of moving.
And of course, we also have Some equipment we use like body
wraps to bring more awareness.
We have what we call the joy of riding.
So it's about this whole, you know, parts of it so you can, we
started, I've had up to 200 horses here on my property, and we for.
40 years have started our own horses that way.
Hundreds of horses we've started.
So it's a step by step.
I believe that horse training should be like watching paint dry.
Shouldn't be exciting.
Rupert Isaacson: You mentioned something called Feldenkrais.
What's that?
Feldenkrais,
Robyn Hood: Moshe Feldenkrais was an Israeli physicist who had had a and he
was a he had a physical injury himself, and he was also a master of martial
arts, and he took what he knew about martial arts and broke down every bit of
movement in his body, and I still think that Feldenkrais is one of the best kept
secrets for his intention was to improve the movement and of dancers and athletes
and their performance, and he ended
Very serious injury, strokes, cerebral palsy, all sorts of things that, and he,
there is a, he's got a great Facebook page called the Feldenkrais Method, and
it shows Moshe working with a young man that had been really not being able to
move very well with a, with his CP, and in one session made such a difference to the
possibility, and so it's, so check it out.
It's something that I think is really neat.
useful for anyone, whether you have any, you know, disabilities or not, because
the philosophy of it is so similar.
Rupert Isaacson: It's an interesting thing.
I've, I've experienced a bit of Feldenkrais.
And I always love it when, aI tries its hand with Feldenkrais because it
comes back as failed in Christ, which I always think is rather wonderful.
Oh, that's hilarious.
Oh my God.
You're failed
Rupert Isaacson: in Christ.
You can but the Feldenkrais method, actually in German, what does it mean?
It just means a field circle.
It's it's a type of body work that's very, very gentle, as you say, almost
like sort of chiropractic or osteopathy.
But without all the cracking and with very, very subtle tiny movements
and I do know that there has been a, a Crossover, to some degree,
between Feldenkrais and T Touch.
Can you talk to us about what are the qualities of these movements?
Whether for humans with, you know, or for horses.
Why so subtle?
Because some of us, for example, me, I like deep pressure.
You know, I like subtle pressures, but I do like deep pressure.
Other people I know don't, you know, everybody's nervous system
is a little bit different.
So what do you feel is the key with the subtlety of these movements?
Because, yeah, both Feldenkrais and T Touch, it, it, it's,
it's not hard, deep pressing.
It's, it, it is more subtle.
What, what's the quality?
Robyn Hood: In the If we think about the nervous system, and we think
about muscles, so when people like deep tissue massage, like it to
go in, it may affect the muscle.
But it's actually the nervous system that tells the muscle what to do.
And so you, what, what my experience is, I personally don't like deep
tissue work because it makes me really sore and I'm not really into pain.
That's, and there's, doesn't mean that, that you can't have a certain
amount of discomfort and it'd be okay.
And there, you know, certainly in the, in the Feldenkrais work, there is
a, There is sort of a portion of it.
That's not 100 percent gentle.
There's a depending on the on the practitioner and so on.
And but you're right.
It's a lot more like what I would call classical osteopathy because
there's 2 kinds of osteopathy when there's 1 that's like.
Healing basically.
And then there's the one that does is more manipulative.
I, what, what my experience is, is that first of all, especially with animals,
we have to find a way to make contact with them that they say it's okay.
And there's no animal on this planet that I know that when you
go in and cause discomfort that they're going to go great do more.
Do more.
And in fact, some of the techniques that are used on horses that are
really deep work, they'll say, you know, leave this door open so you can
get away if they kick you or things like, you know, things like that.
So it may help in some ways that you're you know, you're releasing
you're releasing some tissue or something at the moment, but it
usually comes back pretty quickly.
So if we don't, so what, what, what I find Is it like we have techniques that
you can go in deep without going in hard.
There's a huge, there's a huge difference with, with that and the people that I've
worked with many people that have had that they maybe use their upper body a lot,
so they're super tight and they've had a lot to deep tissue work and it helps
in the moment, but it comes back so, so quickly, the, the sort of discomfort.
And I remember one groomer who had really tight shoulders.
And so I Did some lifts with the wraps and I did some different
things on her shoulders and she told me that I, because of her, her
sort of preference to heavy work.
And then she told me that it hadn't really worked.
I went less, I went less and I went less, but I waited longer.
And then, as I started this little release with her, her shoulder just kept going
down and down and down and down and down.
And she said, Okay.
I've never felt that release before because my body's always been protective.
And so I think that, especially with animals, is there's they're
much more honest in their responses than in a way that than humans are.
And of course you can be too light.
T touch falls into the category of light pressure touch.
You know, the really light touch is that alarming touch, like
when a fly walks across you.
That's not what we're looking for.
Rupert Isaacson: Really don't like that at all.
Robyn Hood: Well, we wouldn't do that.
I don't think any any animal really likes it.
So light pressure touch what I call and there's there's some horses
that are super, super sensitive and the synapses over fire.
So when you use light touch, they it's not very comfortable.
So then what we would do.
Is apply what I call more positive pressure.
So it would be diffusing the contact over a larger area, but creating a
little bit more pressure that soothes that sort of calms the synapses.
So, so there are times that we'll go in deeper, but it won't.
Rupert Isaacson: Can you describe for me that does make sense.
Can you describe for me a fairly typical tea touch session?
So let's say you arrive at my barn and my horses are hardworking boys and girls.
So, you know, like me, they've all got a desire to have ameliorative
touch, you know, on their body.
So you'll, you know, you'd notice, let's say I've got an older horse
and You'll notice perhaps he's a little stiff in the withers.
Maybe he, maybe his stifle is not everything it used to be.
Despite the fact that we're lunging and doing in hand and doing the best
we can but nonetheless, you know So let's say we walk in there and you
you cast your eye over the horse.
You say yeah Yeah, I can see a couple of wear and tear spots.
I can see where the horse is perhaps protecting itself Let's say it was
those two spots withers and stifle.
Can you describe to me more or less how you would operate.
And what's going on through your hands?
What touches are you using?
How are they helping?
And how is this creating a bond between you and the horse that I,
the owner, could then pick up on and continue once you leave the barn?
Robyn Hood: Now, that's a big question because pretty much our answer
is usually it depends, you know, because so the first thing is to
Rupert Isaacson: an imaginary scenario.
Robyn Hood: So I, so I would say the first thing is, if I have a hard working
horse that is older, I have lots of old horses in, in my barn, I, I actually
am looking to help them feel better.
I, I'm not going to actually go in and I don't want to necessarily
bring a lot more awareness.
I want to help them be able to maybe release tension.
Take deeper breaths help them and I, I wouldn't necessarily go
to the areas that are, that are described as being the issue.
I
Robyn Hood: would probably start on the opposite end of the body because the
compensation patterns that happen, I want to find places that so I, you know, just
run my hands over the horse and and watch for their really small response, you know,
a change in the ear, you know, like a, just different things that they might do.
And then I'm going to change the contact so that they can
say, Oh, yeah, this is okay.
You're okay.
You're actually going to listen to me rather than going in and doing this.
So I, I would explore probably extremities in the horse as well.
So I might You know, ask them to pick up the foot.
Do some really small leg circles, but not for very long.
I want to notice how does the horse change their weight?
How do they change their balance?
With what ease can they pick up any foot or not?
Is it with one side easier than the other?
I may do, probably I would do something with the forelock, like
doing forelock slides because it actually is kind of like doing the
tail touches only on the other end.
I'll do take a hold.
What are
Rupert Isaacson: the tail touches?
Robyn Hood: Oh yeah, right.
Okay.
Well, there's a lot.
So the thing is the tail is, you know, connects the whole spine,
the back end to the front end.
And so, I generally on the tail would start standing at the side, a hand
on the top of the croup because that.
really lets me feel what's going on for the horse.
I might start by just stroking the tail hairs from the base of
the root of the tail out to the end, just at the top of the tail.
I noticed the response.
Then I would pick up the hair on the top of the tailbone and pick
it up and just start just circle the tail like, see, can they?
Can they actually pick it up?
Are they tight?
Are they clamped in the, in the tail?
And then I just do like a gentle glide with the hair and then slowly release.
And you'll be able to see the abdominal rectus muscle activates as you do various
things with the tail, which is incredibly helpful for the back of the horse.
So I would do that.
And I also do that with a rider on board.
I think there is nothing more important.
Then doing some of the tail, I may circle the tail and, and do like
a little plug in, if you will.
So I just gently can the tail come into the body.
Can they come out?
What's the horse's response?
Because when the rider's on board, the horse learns about the functional
posture of carrying a horse, carrying a rider rather, and that's, and
so they, they kind of learn, the nervous system learns that it.
That, oh, that's interesting when the tail is, comes back, my, my back comes up.
So that's actually gonna feel better.
Same thing if I take the forelock and I literally just take it
kind of right by the root.
I may start with stroking the hair and then I might circle
the forelock right at the root.
And then I put a little bit of glide out toward myself with a pause.
And then slowly carry them that back and what what the writer feels is
this expansion through the rib cage, and it's incredibly beneficial.
They feel you feel more when they're with a bareback or bareback pad, but you
also feel it under the saddle and you see the rider kind of move up and down.
So the horse kind of gets a better sense of that.
So.
I kind of digress there, but I feel that that's a really important.
So there are a lot of things we may do this gentle flexion of the tailbone.
And what I notice is that as you just gently, we call it purling, take the
tailbone in and out gently that you feel different parts of the horse
moving if you're sitting on them.
So different parts of the spine moving.
Rupert Isaacson: Now, you're a well, well, you know, lifelong seasoned horsewoman
and you, you breed Icelandic horses.
You've been working at Linda's side for 300 years.
You know, but of course, many people within the equine
assisted world, particularly are often relative newcomers to.
To horse owning and to horsemanship, and it can be a very confusing field.
And as you know, it's rife with faction and it's rife with shaming, you know,
if you don't do this, you know, all this sort of emotionally triggering
language, you know, if you don't do this, you're going to do something terrible
to your horse and blah, blah, blah.
So of course what happens is a lot of people come in and they're so
terrified of doing something adverse.
To that with their horse or to their horse that they almost are on the side of
doing too little which of course is Tricky because the horse is a super athlete
bred for thousands of years to be a super athlete has all this energy and Also
somebody who hasn't grown up like you able to read horse behavior There's probably
a note a time you probably can never remember a time when you couldn't read
horse behavior because it was just all around You it was the family culture, but
that's not true for a lot of other people.
So These are some naive questions, but I want you to answer them as best you can.
How do you know?
How do you judge?
How do you discern if a horse is having a positive reaction to what you're doing?
As opposed to a neutral reaction, or maybe not even a reaction at all.
Something moves in the body, but it's in response to something that's
going on half a kilometer away that they're hearing or smelling.
How do you discern what is a positive response?
Robyn Hood: It's a good question.
I would, I would say for me that just teaching people about noticing little
shifts in weight with the horse.
And I don't know that we can actually ever really know.
You know, there's, there's this whole kind of culture that
people will go, Oh, This is good.
And this is bad.
You know, the horse yawns.
It's good.
Oh, the horse yawns.
It's bad.
The horse licks and chews.
It's good.
The horse licks and chews.
It's bad.
You know what?
How do we really
Rupert Isaacson: confusing?
Yeah.
Robyn Hood: And how do we really know?
And that's where I feel like if we.
If we pay attention to the small things like does our horse just
watch it pay attention to the, to the ears what they're doing?
And that doesn't mean that it's bad.
It just mainly means that the horse is paying attention.
Pay attention to the, like, the tension, maybe tension or, or if
you see lines around the mouth, or maybe you see them yawning.
And I don't, I think yawning, I think Most of these things, licking and
chewing, yawning, and so on, blinking, they're a response of the nervous system.
Rupert Isaacson: They can mean many things.
Robyn Hood: They can mean lots of things.
Rupert Isaacson: And
Robyn Hood: I think it's a huge mistake when we say, you know,
one is this and one is that.
I think we have to just be a bit more neutral in our response
and pay attention to it.
Like, pay attention to when does it happen.
If you are doing something, you see a response and you go back to where
you saw sort of a new more what I would say kind of neutral response.
Does the horse does the horse change?
Because I think that's I think so often we don't pay attention to when horses
are really trying to tell us something.
So, for example, grooming is one of the biggest things that
I have people pay attention to.
That's generally one of our first physical interactions with the horse.
So if your horse has to be cross tied to be groomed, then I suggest you
set up a situation where they don't have to be cross tied so you can
actually see what their response is.
Do they turn around to do they pin their ears?
Do they move around?
Do they turn around to bite you?
And I had someone Ask me at a class is, you know, does doing
tea touch make your horse bite?
And I said, well, not usually.
And I said, what was happening?
And she said, well, I was grooming him and he was turning around to bite me.
And I was grooming him in the stall.
And I said, well, where do you normally groom?
She said, he's in cross ties.
So in the cross dice, he can't give any information.
He can move his hind end around, but people usually kind
of tell them to stand still.
And, you know, if you get, if you get after them enough and you are,
you know, like positive enough in what you're doing, you can get horses
to put up with a lot of things if they don't have that restriction.
Can we go slower when we groom?
Can we use a different kind of brush?
Use it on yourself like take a brush on your own arm and brush like I went all
through Pony Club and of course we're taught you know use this flicking motion.
Well a lot of horses really don't like that and all it does is move
the dirt from one place to another.
So what happens if you turn the brush on the side a bit
and you do a long slow stroke?
What happens then?
And notice what the horse's reaction and I think that's one of the.
Best ways for people who aren't familiar with horses.
Is to just start to notice response, like notice, hopefully quiet.
If it's a big response, then you really ideally change something that you do.
So I, I think that's a good way.
And also when you, when you just approach your horse, how
do you approach your horse?
You know, if you approach your horse, from the shoulder.
So I've been importing horses from Iceland since 1977 and in Iceland
at the time, the only way they could catch a horse was to Put them in a
small pen, put them in a corner and then walk up to them and catch them.
They couldn't walk up to them in a pasture and just put a halter on.
So that was the first thing that we taught our horses is that you could
be that you could just be walk, you know, walk up and catch them.
So we'd use a little bit of dried bread and we'd give them a little bread.
We do a little scratch.
We'd walk away.
And then we'd go back up and start that way.
So I think how we catch horses is also really important.
How our first interaction, using the back of the hand instead of the palm, is
it, for most horses, stroking just down the, you know, the side of the neck, is
much more acceptable for most horses, especially a horse you don't know.
When you walk towards a horse, If they look at you, this is, you know, in
past years, we've had so many horses that were hard to catch if I'd stop
and then I would just look away.
And then if the horse looked away and then looked back, I could
always walk up and catch them.
So I think that just paying attention to.
Small things in the, in the pasture or in a paddock or whatever, when you start
to make contact can be really beneficial.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I think, I think that sometimes
one overthinks these things.
I mean, we're all mammals, and I think all mammals enjoy a certain
that we have this thing called the mammalian caregiving system.
So whether we're dogs being suckled, whether we're pigs, whether we're
horses, whether we're monkeys there's a certain just amount of touch.
Embracing and the intention long slow strokes, as you've said, and
these seem to go across all species.
And then this thing of do they seem to seek more?
I've got you.
You talked about the four lock pulls.
I've got a horse that, you know.
If you pull his forelock, man, he's just going to be with you going,
Hey, how about that forelock thing?
And, you know, and he'll actively like move his head, basically put his head
right where your hand is and say, I would like some more of that, please.
It's very, very clear, but he's a very connected sort of, of a
guy who's very human focused.
There could be another horse that's shy who might like it, who might not show
it quite so, blatantly, but nonetheless.
Appears to exhale, drop the head, half close the eye, do
sort of things that we might do.
That a dog might do, that other mammals might do that denote pleasure.
Because oxytocin, you know, serotonin, endorphins are common to us all, right?
So, it's, it's, it's interesting to me that you guys at T Touch
seem to have found your way into.
a number of ways that, when I observe it, seem to create those hormones
in the horse, and you seem to have a repertoire of particular types of touch.
You mentioned some of them now, and those, those listeners who've
listened to my podcast with Linda will know about this business of
the circle and a quarter movement.
Can you talk to me a bit about that?
What is the value of the circle and a quarter movement?
How do you do it?
And what do you observe in terms of the horse's pleasure responses?
If you were going to say to me, Rupert, over Zoom, I'm going to
teach you how to do the circle and a quarter thing with your hand.
How would you do it?
Robyn Hood: Well, I, I think that I probably, first of all, I kind of look
at the person and depends a bit on, on their hands, for instance, like if
you're working with someone who maybe has some arthritis in their hands,
then I'm going to have them put the whole of the hand on the, on the, so
the fingers and the, and the palm, not the middle of the palm, because
that's sort of concave for most people, but just put it gently on the animal.
And then just think about, Moving the tissue so it's like your hand
is kind of Velcro to the body and you're going to move the tissue
in starting in an upward fashion.
So it's going to start with a lift.
So if you think about going around this clock, and of course, now that we have
so many digital clocks, I don't even know how people are going to learn like kids.
But if 6 on the clock is the lowest point of gravity, you're going to make contact.
With that, and then you're going to move the skin under your hand.
The thing that people do a lot of times is they rub.
And if you instead can move the tissue in approximately a circle and a quarter,
have a little pause, and then either carry it back towards where six was, Or
you can just lightly take your hand off and move and move to another place that
I think the most important thing and I often have people just put their hand
on their arm so that they can on their upper arm so that they can actually
feel the movement because the skin is a little bit looser on most people's
arms, say, then maybe even on a horses.
And, you know, if the tissue is really tight.
I actually suggest to people that they imagine that they're moving the tissue,
because when we imagine doing something, our nervous system does something, and
something will happen under our hand.
If because if the tissue is really tight, I see people just kind of rubbing across.
Now, that doesn't mean it's bad.
It's just that there's a different experience with that.
And, and we have so many parts of the hand to use.
If, if somebody, if if an animal's really sensitive, then
we might curve our fingers.
So we're going to use the backs of our first two knuckle joints
to make that same kind of contact.
It'll diffuse the contact a little bit.
I actually have to say, I, I think one of the reasons that the circles are useful.
is that they're a different habit for people.
If we, when our habits bypass the thinking part of our brain, right?
And that's what makes habits useful, and it's what makes them easy.
We don't have to think about doing a habit, right?
We have to think about doing something else.
And so if I want to change something, I have to change something,
which sounds super obvious.
But if I can give them some way that's It can't be too different, like that's why I
look at people's hands and I look at how they just automatically make contact with
their animals, and then I pick a touch that I think will be a little different.
Because it's the same with our animals.
If we want to change habits, we can't just say, other one habit is really bad.
We're going to take you into something else.
We have to expand.
We have to step them out of the habit and then let them come back
in and step out and come back in so that that comfort zone gets bigger.
And so that would be the same thing even with people and the
contact that they're making.
I might, I might start with somebody and say, what about if you.
Stroked the horse's mane, maybe what you do is you take a little contact
at the root of the mane and you do a little circle and a quarter and you
pause and then you stroke probably in the direction the hair grows.
So up a little bit and then pause bit because you know, our, our in breath
is activates the sympathetic and our out breath the parasympathetic,
which is why that, that external, that exhale Is so important.
And it's people that I have to warn people.
I said, you know, I'm not I'm not exasperated.
I'm not bored.
That audible exhale is about grounding and it's about and what I find is
that everyone around me will do it and the animals will do it as well.
So I think that the circles are important.
I think they're important because they actually help us to change a habit.
And yes, they give a different kind of information to the body.
And if we can change something that we do, I think that's actually
probably the most important part of it because we start to think, be
mindful and be present and aware.
Rupert Isaacson: I think that's a very good point.
I think, I know that particularly those of us who are lifelong horse
people tend to have methodologies that we comfort zones for us.
They came out of the culture that we were born into and
they have their pros and cons.
But if we're not learning new languages, well, we're always going to be
stuck speaking the same old dialect of whatever language it was, which
will be great in certain contexts and completely useless in others.
As we know, if I want to, I'm sitting here in Germany, my London, South
African vernacular is of limited value when I'm trying to order
a drink in a bar in Frankfurt.
You know, so I've got to, you know, and it, I think it's, it, it's such an
interesting thing that while we know as horse people, that there is a whole
world of equestrian culture universe of different equestrian cultures out there,
none of which is better or worse than any other because they all have evolved for
very specific jobs and are good at them.
So they're presumably they, you know, they work.
And yet we often have these defensive responses when we come
across one that's unfamiliar to us.
Oh, I don't like that.
Yeah.
I remember as a kid, once being out hunting in Leicestershire, which is
the, the, Horse culture I grew up in, which is very much cross country
riding, jumping, that sort of thing.
And so hunting was a big part of it.
And big fences, you know, big hedges.
So that's what it was all about.
It was about being brave and riding at the hedge and, you know, getting over.
And they were, I was listening to two guys discussing, local guys
discussing an equestrian show they'd seen that had been coming through
the area in the early eighties.
And they were like, well, you know, I don't teach my horse to do circus tricks.
And I remember sitting there on my horse thinking.
Why not?
Why wouldn't you?
Like, what, what's wrong with that?
And, and why, maybe the horse would enjoy it.
And why, why do you feel that the thing that we do has more merit than that thing?
Interesting.
So interesting that we limit ourselves in this way.
And of course, therefore, presumably our animals.
You have within a whole repertoire of different kinds of touches with quite
exotic names and quite specific movements of the hand and finger that go now beyond
the circle and a quarter sort of basis.
Can you give us an example of some of those touches and their names and what
they mean, what they're for, how they got their names and how we might do them?
Robyn Hood: When Linda started with this work, and I remember we
had sort of five basic touches and basically they didn't have a name.
They had a description, you know, so there was, we would use the flat of the
hand, or we would there were, it was basically just giving a description.
And.
Because Linda's really interested in this concept of light, right, left brain
learning, what she realized is that first of all, we were working with animals.
And by the way, T Touch is actually the only modality, like, like contact
modality that started with animals.
Like most massage and Reiki and all these things they started with people
and then people found the value and so they went into, you know, try
them on their animals fair enough.
Linda went the opposite way, even though our background you know
our for in 1963 she and her first husband wrote a book called physical
therapy for the athletic course.
So they did do, you know, like typical kind of massage on, on horses.
But when she, you know, found out about this, the felon Christ,
she had to change it enough.
So she, it would be teachable.
Okay.
And
Robyn Hood: so when she, many of the names came from animals that she was working on.
So for instance, the, the clouded leopard, she was at the Zurich zoo and she was
working with clouded leopards, have spots.
And she was working with these young cubs that were quite.
And she said, okay, so she put her, the pads of her fingers on the spots and she
moved the spot in a circle and a quarter.
So that became the clouded leopard, which is kind of the You know, sort
of our hallmark touch, if you will and then she thought, well, if I
was to make my fingers a little flatter, which diffuses the contact.
So the 1st and 2nd flange would be making contact.
That's when the leopard is lying their paws down, so that
could be the lying leopard.
And so it just it developed from that the Python lift.
It was developed, which is basically, you know, making contact,
supporting the tissue up a little.
Pausing and carrying the tissue back down started on Joyce the python.
And so, so it was, you know, and it was a snake.
I mean, it was, you know, Linda's experiences with these
animals has been so profound.
Joyce was a at the San Diego wild animal park and the, and she had a chronic
lung infection and typically they keep snakes in very small places and people
will say a snake wouldn't know the difference if it lived in a shoebox.
Which is pretty shocking that a person that actually knows
reptiles would say that.
Anyway, Joyce was lying across this stage, and she had some troubles she
had a lot of tough trouble breathing.
And so Linda started doing these little lifts, just along the side of her body.
And, excuse me, snakes have an amazing tissue.
So wonderful to work, do touch on snakes.
They don't feel anything like people think they're going to feel anyway.
She's working along doing these little touches along the body, a little
bit behind the head, and all of a sudden, all of this stuff started to
just expel out of this snake's nose.
And so that was quite interesting, but the next day when the snake was brought
back up onto stage, the snake went right past everybody, went in front of Linda,
stood up, put her head up and they, they do this little tongue flick to,
to just check out their environment.
And that's what he did with his head over her shoulder or
her head over her shoulder.
And the, the cameraman, this one cameraman was afraid of snakes and he was actually
in tears when he watched it because.
He thought snakes were so awful, and the fact that the snake clearly
made a connection to her was beyond, beyond his, you know, his knowledge.
And so that became the Python lift.
And so many of these touches have either come from a person who found
that they needed to touch in a different way to make themselves comfortable.
So for instance, the owl is when you can make a little circle with
your thumb and your index finger.
And Linda started using it on her ribs because it's an easy way to make that
circle and a quarter on your ribs or on your back because your hand isn't twisted.
And it feels different.
It's not just that we kind of lie in bed at night and think of how
can we have these different names.
They feel different.
They're different for people to use.
And we want to make it accessible.
So we want to find things that people that individuals can do easily.
For instance, if somebody is has loose ligaments or is, you know,
double jointed, the lying leopard will, or the clouded leopard will
be the hardest touch for them to do.
Because when they make contact with the pads of the fingers,
the first joint collapses.
Which creates more context.
So for that person, we'd say, ah, do the chimp.
So curve your fingers and use the back of the fingers or use the
flat of the hand so that you're not going to have this direct pressure.
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Why was why was Linda working with these zoo animals?
How did that come about as a horse person?
Robyn Hood: Why she was working with the snake?
Rupert Isaacson: Well, yeah, and other zoo animals, the clouded leopards.
How did that evolve?
Robyn Hood: Well, some from the Icelandic horses.
So, Dr.
Eason Bugle was the director at the Zurich Zoo, and he also had Icelandic
horses, and he saw what Linda was doing, and he said, well, do you think it could
help this, whatever the animal was?
And so she went, she was having a, you know, like a tour of the zoo, and these
little cubs had a distemper and were like frothing at the nose and so on.
And she did the raccoon touch, the very, very small touches
of the tips of the fingers.
All around the nose, the face and so on.
And she only did it on one and the others watched and benefited as well.
Which again is, there's so many things that we don't understand in this life
and it doesn't mean that they don't work because they all recovered and
they didn't think that they would.
Rupert Isaacson: It's very interesting you know that we we have something
in within horseboy method called sensory work which came out of when
my son first started going to Betsy the horse that he made the first
contact with he would just lie on her.
And I would keep a hand on him to, you know, steady him, but she would graze and
he would use her body like a big old couch and, but he would find ways he would have
certain preferred ways to lie on her.
And when he would turn around on her and lie.
With his head on her butt, which, and sort of hug the butt,
we call that the butt hug now.
You know, within horse boy method.
The effects on her would be the same as the effect on him.
She would effectively go into almost a state of hypnosis.
All his sensory stuff would calm down.
Her sensory system would clearly calm down.
But as you say, the other animals in the vicinity, because there were always two
other horses in the field, whenever he did that, would always begin to come closer.
And then absolutely mimic the same nervous system release.
Sort of hypnotic state almost literally drooling with a sort of a string of
drool Connecting their mouths to the to the grass that she was and we've
seen this time and time and time again.
And as you know
The hormones that we produce for stress are fairly contagious You
know, they you can that's why you know crowds are dangerous
but equally what's not so talked about is that pleasure and comfort
and soothing also seems to be the contact high effectively.
So when you talked about those clouded leopards, I was thinking about the other
horses just, and I've observed this with TTouch when, when Linda's been at
our place and has been working on one of our horses, any horse that's within
about 25, 30 feet is clearly benefiting.
and clearly participating.
When you're moving the skin in these ways, where you're sort of lifting,
whether it's the python lift or whether it's the owl, or whether it's
the clouded leopard, are you working with fascia, or are you working with
epidermis, or are you working with both?
What do you feel you're accessing mostly, or most directly?
Robyn Hood: I have no idea.
Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
That's an honest answer.
You know,
Robyn Hood: it's Ricky Schultz is a vet in Denmark and she wrote with another
German a book on fascia a couple of years ago for for dogs and for horses.
And she spent three months Fascia,
Rupert Isaacson: isn't it?
I'm sorry.
I had to go there.
Robyn Hood: Yeah, right.
There you go.
She was she spent three months with me on my farm when she was in vet school.
And and then in, I think in about 2000 and.
12 as a vet, she wrote she wrote an article called a woman ahead of her
time about, about Linda and T Touch and it was her feeling that the,
that the touches affected connective tissue, which connective tissue is
Fascia is connective tissue, but not all connective tissue is fascia.
So it's very, very, very connected.
And in their very old route, like a form of of body work and, you know,
instead of meridians, like fascia, like fascia, connective tissue
carries information faster into more areas of body than, than meridian.
So we don't have to know where they are.
That's actually, The beauty of this work is so my, my interest is, is
finding out what the horse says.
Yes, this is acceptable for me.
That's the most important thing is.
Oh, yeah, then they might go.
Oh, I'm not sure.
And then you change it a little bit.
You change the pressure, the speed, the type of touch, the part of the hand.
You may do a pause.
And then you go to where they seem okay, and then you kind of move
away and they go, ah, you get it.
And from there is when, so, so I feel that that interaction of
having that animal say, yes, this is okay, is the most important.
thing that we do.
So what?
That's why we also have so many touches because if and when someone
says my animal can't be touched, I'll kind of go, what have you done?
And it's like, because if you, you multiply the types of touches with
the pressure, with the speed, with the direction, and you have infinite numbers.
Now, we also have the body wraps and what I've started.
That's what I was going
Rupert Isaacson: to ask you about next.
So thank you for taking us there.
Yeah.
Robyn Hood: Okay.
All right.
So, of course, the body wraps basically bring information
through the nervous system.
When I talked to Ricky Schultz about it, she said they also follow fascia lines.
So maybe that's part of it.
And what they affect is the superficial fascia.
And it's, you know, it's interesting how these things progress because I, you
know, when you were talking about, you know, the sensory integration and so on,
is that we do things because they work.
And if they don't work, we do something else.
And then later on.
The science proves that they work and it's kind of like, Oh, good.
Well, we've known that for a long time.
But, you know, that's kind of nice to have that that sort of validation.
And so the, the body wraps, give them a sense of where they are in space.
They're not intended to be give support, but rather feedback.
What I've started to do is take the wraps because we always did belly lifts.
Belly lifts are amazing with wraps.
We started out, you know, for colic with towels and so on.
The wraps are so much more subtle and my experience is that horses respond
so well and dogs too, especially if they have any touch sensitivity.
So any kind of touch defensiveness, which many beings have, the,
the wraps can be useful.
So started taking a wrap.
And instead of putting it necessarily around the body is taking it across
the body, and either just just put it on the body and either just stretch
it a little, and then pause and slowly carry release the stretch, or.
Putting it against the body so that it's, you know, kind of firmly placed, and
then moving it in a circle and a quarter.
Once again, you're moving tissue.
This is way less threatening for beings that have touch, you know, concerns.
And, or, we started actually with a horse that had a very roached back.
And of course we have always done, you know, lifts on the legs with the
wraps, and, you know, so that you're supporting the tissue up a bit,
and along the neck is also amazing.
But we thought, well, what would happen if we took it across the top of the
back, and we actually just gently stretched it down and paused, and
then we slowly released the stretch.
And the horse's back went from being really roachy to flattening.
And that was our first thought of, wow, this could be pretty interesting to do.
So I have a, one of our instructors in Australia works with a lot of
racehorses, and she, she uses this with.
horses with kissing spine, horses with a lot of things that are
super fit for work, so they can be really sensitive about contact.
And when I showed this to Rikki Schultz, she said, yes, I think you're really
affecting the superficial fascia.
So we call it fascial integration.
And it's it's interesting because Of course, everybody wants to go
everything deep and, you know, the fascia, the iron, the fascia, and so on.
And now, gee, guess what?
They're finding that maybe it actually is a little more beneficial to do less.
Rupert Isaacson: Can you describe the wraps?
I think it's hard for people that haven't seen the body wraps.
To know what it is you're talking about.
So, just for listeners, we're not talking about the the horse resembling
an Egyptian mummy These are Specific wraps that go around specific parts of
the body and one of the things which I love about them is that you can do
them in movement And they can have all sorts of beneficial effects there too.
Could you describe to us please Robin?
You know, a fairly typical series of types of wrap you would do.
More or less what they look like.
What are you actually using for the wraps?
And, you know, for somebody to get a bit of a pictorial
understanding of it in their head.
Robyn Hood: If you've ever had a sprained ankle or a sprained wrist
or whatever, you will have had some sort of tensor bandage on your wrist.
You know, you can put it on your wrist or your or your ankle.
Now on your ankle, they probably put it rather tight for support.
So it felt good at first, but then it would start to ache after a while.
So literally, it's any type of elastic bandage.
Now we pay attention to the amount of stretch there is, but in general,
even if you had a leg wrap for the horse, the challenge is the German
ones are really tight, the stretch, but there's some that are really soft.
You take a wrap.
The first thing that I would do you could use a polo wrap.
I mean, if that's what you have and you have nothing else,
you could use a polo wrap.
It won't give you the same amount of stretch.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So ideally, what wrap would you use?
Robyn Hood: Depends where you live, because there's a lot of ideas.
So what I do is we use a lot of ace wraps.
We use Hartman.
There's different companies that, that make, they're basically
medical elastic elastic.
Generally, all cotton is good.
That's what A stands for, all cotton, elastic, no latex, because it changes
the way the stretch is, but there's lots that, that are available.
So, with a, the average horse, a, I would use a 4 inch or 10
centimeter, that they is pretty common to be, to be sold in the store.
And that's what most Polo wraps are, is they're about 10 centimeters wide.
I would start with it just going around the base of the neck.
And what it does is it helps to release that so many horses brace
at the base of the neck, and it just gives them an awareness about.
can they, can they release your, that base of the neck?
It's the same with people.
You put a very light wrap around the shoulders.
They may not, ideally they don't feel it.
It's not feeling tight.
And you'll notice in maybe 15 or 20 minutes, the shoulders start to let go.
They start to actually let go into that wrap.
So the same kind of thing that I might do, the easiest thing to do, start
with it around the base of the neck.
With young horses, the next step that we would do is we would put it around
the girth area and attach it to the Base wrap or the right wrap that's
around the base of the neck because we want to prepare them for the feeling
of something around their middles, you know, or a horse that happens to
be girthy or, you know, sort of cold backed and so on can also be beneficial.
Then I, I, ideally you move them after each, after each thing that you, that
you add if you can, especially the first time, because you can be surprised at the
amount of change in posture that happens.
It's just a simple wrap or even a wrap when you move, when you say
Rupert Isaacson: move them, would you take the wrap off
and move them or would you move
Robyn Hood: them with the wrap on take, take them for a little walk
just to see, just, I mean, just move them a little bit to see what
does there a change in the posture?
Is there a change in their balance point is, do they now have a leg at
each corner or are they really straddle?
You may see, are they really leaning forward?
They may take them back so that the chest comes over the front legs.
You don't know.
You just observe.
That's where it's a good practice to simply observe what you're seeing.
And because this is the other thing, you know, about, about T Touch when I went
into the sort of application that we have.
Most body work doesn't take them into kind of mindful movement.
It's changing a little bit now, but that's what's so important, because
if we can't change how they move, Just standing still and releasing isn't really
useful because most people ride their horses or they do something with them.
And that's why we want to take it and the wraps can help to take that into movement.
So that's the simplest thing that I have people start with.
Now, if a horse.
has worn a rug, like worn some kind of blanket, and they're comfortable
around things around their hind end, then we might add a wrap that
goes around the hind quarters.
Now, what I've started to do is chunking down, because that's the thing, when
we can break things into small pieces, we can make it easier for people even
to observe and for horses to accept.
So I might take that wrap and just between my two hands stretch it
across the like just one side of the rear end maybe to the tail like so
it's going just around the buttocks.
Do a little stretch, pause, and slowly release.
I might do that from both sides.
That's going to give you an idea of how the horse might feel when you
put a little figure eight wrap that goes around the chest, crosses over
the withers, comes back around the hindquarters, and attaches back to itself,
which would take two or three wraps depending on the length of your wraps.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so you also do a wrap which I've seen, it's intriguing
to me, around the top of the head.
Please talk to me about that.
Robyn Hood: Once again, one of the things that has been so helpful for
us, you know, you asked how did Linda, you know, how does a horse person go
to work with these different animals?
I would say, That I have learned as much working with species that are unfamiliar
to me and transferring that information to species that are familiar to me, then with
the knowledge that I have, because as you say, if you're a long time horse person,
you know, quote unquote, what's right, what's wrong, how, you know, how you do
things and when you go to a species, you don't know much about or anything about.
You have to open your mind to something else.
And so then, so with the head wraps, it started with a dog.
I remember the dog.
I had a little face wrap on him because he was doing a lot of barking and so on,
just to bring awareness around his muzzle.
And he took his paw and he pushed it up to his forehead.
And so here, here it is across the forehead and he was absolutely calm
and quiet and totally okay with it.
And so I showed this at one of our advanced trainings and one
of our vets who is a holistic vet said, you know, could be.
That so the, the, the, the front of the forehead is the
start of the governing vessel.
And that is a common point.
So it could be, and it's not about pressure.
It's just about this little awareness that maybe that's one
of the things that's calming them.
Now, we were discussing this at the celebration last weekend.
The other thing is, is that the, the head wrap, where the points that it
does, maybe what it does is it connects our new brain to our old brain.
And so it's connecting the different parts, sort of different
neurological parts of the body.
What we've seen with horses that are, like, say, really hyper excited,
concerned about things, wrap, and I usually start with just take it twice
around the neck, a little, little bit behind the ears, and then bring
one of them forward over the ears.
That's the easiest way to do it for someone.
Horses will suddenly calm down.
They will be, they, they'll still look around, but they're, it,
it just takes 'em down a notch.
Now, if you put it on a horse that's really quiet, it can make them too quiet.
So you just take it off and then it, it's okay.
I think that it also helps them come more into their own bodies rather
than being external, you know, they're these external horses that
they're just aware of everything but not themselves, and I think it helps
to bring them more into themselves.
Certainly helps people.
Rupert Isaacson: I've seen Linda when she was out with us, we had three
stallions who could be quite stallion y.
And she would sometimes work with her fingers inside the mouth.
Not as in jaw flexions, but actually on the gums around the front of the teeth.
I remember the first time I saw her do it, I was like, oh gosh,
I hope you don't lose a finger.
And quite the opposite this seemed to be a massively calming
experience for the horses.
Can you talk to us a little bit about those, those gum releases
and how, what, how they work?
Robyn Hood: Yeah, so the multitouch, if we think about that, the mouth is
one of the closest connections we have to the limbic system, really primary
controller of lots of different, you know, basic functions of the body.
And we can see that in horses and dogs and people, you know, and where people
will say yes, I'm just fine and their upper lip is like really stiff and
really tight when they're totally not.
Fine.
And we see it with horses, too.
And so what we found is that, and, and I recommend to people who aren't
so familiar with horses is, you know, start with the backs of your fingers or
fingers curved and, and do some circular touches around the outside of the muscle.
And
Robyn Hood: you want to hold one hand lightly on the halter on the other
hand, because it's about steadying the horse, like giving the horse a little
bit of a parameter without, you know, holding tightly, but you're safer
that way you're in better balance.
And so you can go around and the, and the chin used to feel around the chin when
horses are super generally emotional about something, the chin may be super tight,
really, really tight so this touch brings awareness people have the same thing.
Going around the outside and then.
You can we have, you know, we teach people about keeping their fingers together
and being able to go in up on the side of the mouth or just gently taking your
side of your index finger and coming around the inside of the upper lip or
the lower lip thumb is really helpful.
And it's actually the thing we recommend to Maori horses, which
is the exact opposite of what you know, people would actually expect.
And, you know, I mean, you can learn so much.
I remember I was teaching somewhere and they had a, you know, a young quarter
horse and the horse had started to become really difficult to bridle.
And so what I did is I went and I did some work on the outside
of the mouth and I went in.
where the gum meets the upper lip with the side of my index finger and just
kind of gently rubbing back and forth.
And if the mouth is dry, wet your hand.
And what I felt was he had a tooth that was cracked and it was hanging.
So he was young and he was changing his teeth.
So imagine what that would feel like for him.
Yes, he's cooperative about being bit, having the bit in, and then
he starts to change his teeth and it hits the, hits the tooth.
Wonder he didn't want it in.
Once they could understand that, they changed what they did.
And I think that one of our, I think the biggest, the most important aspect of
this work is to understand that behavior is a form of communication, particularly
if you have a horse that suddenly the behavior changes, really look deeply,
because in my experience, there is.
Always a reason.
Always.
Rupert Isaacson: Just writing that down.
Behaviour is a form of communication.
Look deeply.
There's always a reason.
I love that.
Robyn Hood: And I, I can tell you that there have been times that I've worked
with horses and I've thought to myself maybe this one just doesn't, you know,
maybe there's one that now they're just, and I have to tell you that on those
horses I've found that there's been such a reason that they didn't cooperate.
That it was a miracle that they could do what they could and, and it's often
not found until a dissection is done.
And in the dissection and there, I mean, Sharon May Davies is doing amazing work
with doing dissections and usually they're on animals that people have gone through
everything, you know, like all sorts of.
You know, sort of westernized and allopathic and some holistic
medicine, and they've, there's nothing that can change what's going on.
And when they do a dissection, they find that organs are in the wrong place.
Things are, there's, ribs are in different, in different configurations.
So I consider That it's a miracle what horses actually do for us in reality.
Rupert Isaacson: No, I, I agree.
And it's, it's an interesting thing too that in our current season of
horsemanship in the West there's of course a very well meaning and it comes
from a good place emphasis on, you know, we don't want our horses to suffer.
So trying to do less or ask less or put less pressure on or whatever.
And.
One of the things that one often gets told is, well, you know, a horse can feel
a fly, you know, walking on its back.
Well, yes, but so can I,
and I
Rupert Isaacson: can feel that.
And sometimes feeling feels not good.
And sometimes that feeling feels good.
And I can wear a backpack and hike up a mountain, even if that backpack isn't.
Made customized for me and if my shoulders are a bit sore after a day or two of
that They seem to get less sore later unless there's something desperately
wrong with the backpack or it's just way too heavy or something So that we
seem to have gotten to a point where?
We're being told that anything with the sympathetic nervous system any kind
of stress is automatically bad And, of course, this isn't necessarily so.
So, yeah, horses can be very stoic about what they put up with people, too.
And I think people often go through life bearing an awful lot of discomfort,
but not necessarily suffering.
Because it becomes familiar.
Sometimes suffering, sometimes not.
Like, something That you mentioned like the tooth hanging
and knocking against a bit.
No doubt, you know
But if someone maybe had the ribs in the wrong place I'm equating it to a
human now or an organ in a weird place but had sort of learned to compensate
for that and go through life or
Are they suffering they might communicate that they are or they might not
communicate they are or they might say no I'm actually not this is sort of my
reality This sort of feels all right to me and then maybe an autopsy would be
done on them and one would look at them go My god, how did you get through life?
So to me?
It's an endless mystery as you say and a miracle I mean, there's the other
thing too, which is that God didn't invent ponies to carry monkeys, right?
So just by sitting up there we're Got to to some degree negatively affect
the thing that's carrying us and yet at the same time a horse can go on
into their 30s quite happily carting monkeys about As you say it's a miracle
And speaking of miracles, you know when we go into the the sphere of the therapeutic.
I always feel that that's where You enter this sort of quantum
area with horses where Suddenly what you think you know about them
Dissolves into a miasma of what's actually going on and you yourself told
me a story I'd love it if you would retell that story about the girl with
cerebral palsy Because I think that that really illustrates that point.
Would you be so kind as to tell listeners that story?
Robyn Hood: Yeah, and I do think
I do think that horses are here to teach us a lot.
I really do believe that.
And I think it.
That we still have to be their stewards
Rupert Isaacson: without a doubt.
Robyn Hood: You know, that's the so I think we have to look at a lot of things.
So, about, I don't know, 35 years ago, I was approached by a family that
had she'd been taking writing lessons at the local therapeutic writing.
Facility and
Rupert Isaacson: Canada.
Robyn Hood: This is in Canada.
And she wanted to they want to get a horse for and we, we
bred Icelandics at that point.
And I had a young Icelandic, like, we don't start our horses until
they're 4 and then we, we start really riding them maybe at 5 and carry on.
And so I said, well, come on out and I have a horse that might be useful
because I wanted a really smooth horse.
And this was a gelding who actually had no trot.
He, he and, and one of the reasons, and you probably know this, but one of
the reasons that gated horses can be so helpful is because their motion is
more side to side than forward and back.
So it actually counterbalance the state that lack of stability with
if riders don't have the light forward and back stability sort of.
like evens it out a little.
So they came out and they put her in her wheelchair and she was like, she
was quite pretty, pretty non verbal.
Like she could make sounds and so on, but she didn't really speak.
And they, so I brought this little horse, Bangsy, out and I, I said, you know,
you can meet him in the wheelchair.
And he put his nose down and he sniffed all around her.
Never seen wheelchair before.
He just sniffed all around him and she loved it.
Of course, he sniffed her hair and he sniffed everything.
And then I said, Well, I think you could put her on him and he studied separated
just like he stood like just like he was.
Racing himself so it'd be very stable for her to be put on and
like her legs kind of out there.
And there he was.
So his father put her on.
And of course, at the time, what he did, he was told to because her legs,
her muscles were very contracted.
He told her, you know, he would pull her legs down.
And I said, can I show you something that might be easier for her?
So I showed some python lift.
So I literally put my hand on the leg and I supported the tissue up a bit.
And I paused.
And then I slowly carried it down and her legs just melted around the horse.
And it was fascinating because whenever she'd come out and her, her father would
go to pull her legs down, she'd point at me to do the other thing with her legs.
So we started off by leading her with him and he was very good.
We had sidewalkers like she was used to, but she'd fallen off with sidewalkers
like she was pretty unbalanced.
We graduated to her riding.
We ponied her.
We found that actually ponying her was the easiest thing because if
she started to lose her balance, we could just kind of, you know, take
her arm and pull her back on it.
And we took her out on the trail.
We took her out and we had it.
The thing is, her parents said, listen, this is so much joy for her.
She would, she would smile and laugh and she would make these kissing
sounds when she wanted to go faster.
And then he would tolt and she would like just grin and then he'd canter, like
a canter, like a little rocking horse.
And she was, she had freedom for the first time in her life.
And I have to say that we moved from Alberta to B.
C.
and that was the thing that was the hardest.
Was leaving her because she had to, she moved to another place, but it wasn't
the same in terms of what she got.
But the relationship, this, this horse, we would know when she was coming out
because he would be standing at the gate 10 minutes before she arrived.
And never any other time.
So we, Oh, well, you know, Eileen must be on her way out and there she is.
But the, the, the joy and the relationship that this horse, I, I feel that this
horse felt it was his purpose in a way to, to to have this person because
she just adored, he would, she would feed him carrots and he would slobber
all over her and she adored it.
You know, it was, it was the thing in her life that gave her, I think the most.
The most freedom.
So it was a very it's very an impactful experience for us.
Rupert Isaacson: I had a horse once.
It was an extraordinary horse.
He died last year.
Ripe old age, just found dead in the field.
The best way to go.
We had a kid come out to us that had drowned and was completely
unresponsive, but alive.
And people said, well, you know, he's sort of a vegetable, you know, he won't
give you any any sort of feedback at all.
Do you think you could do something?
And, you know, you get these emails, you're like, gosh, I really don't
know, I, you know, I'm not hubristic enough to say that we could, but I'm
obviously not going to say don't come.
So.
They came and we were all a bit nervous this quarter horse clue who was a
grumpy old bastard Like he proved to me that I cannot train a horse Anything
that I tried with him was that nope.
No, no, but yet he would do everything if it was his idea so he was the he
was the consummate horse I could always rely on if I had to go say into do
something in the city or stunts like go into a department store or A nightclub
while the band is playing to talk to people about autism and stuff like that.
He'd just be rock solid because he found it interesting, basically,
you know, he'd be like, okay, fine.
That's kind of amusing.
I'll do that.
But if it didn't interest him, he'd be like, no, sorry.
And so my attempts to, you know, dressage the horse were laughable.
But he, this, this
kid in the chair is brought out.
And Clue looks over, he must have been about a hundred meters away in the field.
He looked around and he just came straight over, did exactly what you talked about,
sniffed everything, sniffed the child.
And I wasn't thinking, oh, we're going to work with Clue or anything.
I was just sort of standing there thinking, I don't
know what we're going to do.
And then he began to lick the child
all over the body.
Never seen anything like this before.
Haven't seen it since either.
I don't mean a couple of licks.
I mean A bath, a tongue bath.
What's going on?
I don't know what's going on.
So, long and the short of it, is we put the child on top, and the child began to
respond, and the child began to point, and make noises and indicate what they wanted.
And, what was passing between Clue and this child?
One could only guess at.
What was passing between your girl and that young horse?
How did he know that she was Going to come ten minutes before.
Okay, maybe he could, he could identify the sound of the car at
a certain distance, or something like that, but chances are it
sounded much the same as other cars.
What, what did he know, and how?
As you said earlier in the, in the, in this interview, you
know, observation is everything.
Yeah.
Isn't it
Rupert Isaacson: interesting how often it still leaves us scratching our heads?
Robyn Hood: Yeah.
Wow.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Now you, you don't, of course, just work with horses.
You work with dogs.
And one of the things which we're often.
Desirous of people who work with the equine assisted field to do is
don't just work with horses because Social animals we're social animals.
We monkeys you never know what the person is going to get into you
never know what other Feedback is going to come from other animals.
Talk to us about the work that you do with dogs Because the dog
is the sort of most obvious one that most people have access to.
Most special needs people, most people needing some sort of therapy, they
don't really have access to horses.
They might come out to your barn, they might come out to my barn,
but it's not their daily life.
Dogs can be.
Can you talk to us about the TTouch you do with dogs, and the work you do with dogs?
How similar is it to the work you do with horses, and what are the
contexts that you find it useful in?
Robyn Hood: Well, when we first started, of course, you know, Linda
started the work with horses, and then it was like, oh, Well, could
it could you work with dogs as well?
And could you work with other animals?
And we didn't really know.
My interest in working with people with dogs is to again, have dogs have
as much choices as possible in life.
It's not, you know, none of us have complete choice.
For sure.
I feel like it's so important to pay attention.
I think dogs get misread so often.
I think these dogs, you know, Oh, my dog's so happy to see everybody.
It's like, but are they really like they're so what are they?
What does that look like?
Is what I always ask people is what is that like?
Oh, I'm so happy.
Look like, well, they're bouncing all around and they're, you
know, tails wagging and they're jumping on people and so on.
And it's like, well, Could it be that their behavior is sort of
disproportionate to the situation?
You know, if you, like I, my dog, when I come home or one of my dogs, both of
my dogs, when I come home from being away, they're like super excited.
That's kind of predictable.
But if someone comes that doesn't know a dog at all, and they have this, you
know, super highly aroused behavior, I feel like it's simply arousal and
it isn't necessarily, it may be how they cope with this sort of situation.
And so, I.
Encourage people to be calmer around dogs and not like get into
this, you're such a good dog and this ruffling things with dogs.
They don't know.
And this like, whack, whack, whack is supposed to be such the same with horses.
You know, do you think the horses really think that when we smack
them when we're happy and we smack them when we're mad that it's, you
know, means, you know, it's okay.
So I, I just want people to don't.
One of the ways that we can be able to live in our homes is to help
people build a relationship and understand that they can meet as
many needs as the dogs that they can.
And that's not always easy in the lifestyle.
We live on a farm.
You probably do too.
We, our dogs have a lot of freedom.
We have sheep and we have cows.
And I was thinking about all the animals.
We have sheep and cows that are super friendly.
And so people get to interact with them because they're there
because they've been there.
Yeah.
You know, they've been handled, but they also have freedom.
So, you know, there's that, there's that kind of thing.
So, I would say that the biggest thing is to help dogs and their people be in
physical, emotional and mental balance.
That would be our, our aim.
And if we can help people start to.
Pay attention to that.
They start to observe their dogs in a different way and maybe understand again
their, their behavior a little bit more.
It's dogs really do a lot for us because they live in our homes and
they, they are so, so emotionally attached to people reading their
emotions of how they're feeling.
And if I think that a lot of times that people looked at
their dogs, they could be.
They could know what they're what's going on for them as well and it's
like my acupuncturist would say to me.
So, you know, how are your moods?
And I go, don't ask me ask my husband or ask my kids or ask whatever.
I, I don't necessarily know what's going on, but I feel like
we can really see a reflection.
A lot of times with our dogs.
I would say,
Rupert Isaacson: when you're using T touch with dogs give me some
examples about What you'd use for what situations and what you would show?
Well, and what are the sort of go tos that you you typically find yourself?
So with
Robyn Hood: puppies with puppies isn't i'm going to start puppies
and go to your old age The thing is first thing is with puppies is We,
we use what we call containment.
So contain versus restraint.
Those are kind of words that we use even for bowls, whatever it is.
So if we can teach people to make mindful contact on the body, like
gently stroke the ears, for instance, gently the mouth and the paws, not just.
desensitization, but actually help them be comfortable by doing
little bits of, of touch and contact and so on with the puppy.
So it could be any type of touch.
Usually we teach a little bit of the ear slides maybe a bit of tail touches
and just some gentle work on the body, because that can be so calming for
puppies that are like over the top.
And then as they're going into sort of more, you know, adolescent that
are kind of over the top, then we start into Again, some some touches
because they'll go through a period where maybe they're a little bit.
They're kind of reactive to touch and that doesn't mean in a negative way, but
they get sort of hyperactive, if you will.
So maybe we have to change our touch.
Maybe we have to change what we do.
Maybe we want to take them into mindful movement.
And this is not about, it's not about training the dog.
It's so like with the horses, we use different elements like the labyrinth
and maybe different surfaces and so on, so that we can have short
periods of making a connection with them through doing mindful movement.
Mindful.
And slow movement builds muscle at a deeper level than fast movement.
So if we can have these moments of helping them come into physical
balance, that can be super helpful.
Same with, you know, building a relationship.
Relationship is.
It's so important because it's that relationship that they want to cooperate.
They want to be with you.
They, they, you know, and that's what we're looking for is how can we
build a relationship years ago when we had our, our, our first companion
animal training and it was up here and it was in the winter and it was
really colder than it should be.
So we went down to a local school and there was a
kindergarten class in progress.
So we sent a couple of our practitioners into the kindergarten with a couple of
stuffed dogs to talk to them about how they make contact with their dogs at home.
And We got the feedback that from two of the kids, one of them said, you know,
my, our dog never wanted to be with me.
But after I started, you know, doing these touches, the dog wanted to be with me.
And the same thing with the cat, the cat started to come and sleep on my
bed and I always wanted the cat to make a connection, but it didn't like me.
And it just, you know, it was just showing them a different way of, of making
contact and being mindful with that.
So that was.
You know, that's so powerful when you can when you can give children a way to help
them build a relationship in that way.
And then, of course, with with older dogs, we have a husky
cross that will be 15 in April.
And he so we do.
T touches on him regularly.
He's losing a little bit of, you know, the connection of his back end.
So we put a little Porter wrap where it just goes across the chest, across
over the back, and then attaches.
So it's just one wrap around the chest and one going around the middle.
It stabilizes him to the point that he, he's not losing his own legs.
He can get out and be really, really jaunty.
So, It's you can really use it throughout their whole life and I feel
that when we build relationship with them, they, they want to listen to us.
They, you know, they want to cooperate.
They want to be with it.
So, of course, you can use it with any modality that you're using.
But I feel like it's the, I feel like relationship is what most
people want with their animals.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I think it's what most animals want, if they're mammals in
particular, you know, with us and with each other and it's, it's so interesting
how, although, for example, I'm sure this was the case for you when I was growing
up, it was very much the case of dominate.
We weren't actually ever told to dominate in those words, but it was, you make
him do what you, he's got to do what you want to do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
That was.
The accepted and and myths like they say the horse didn't want to go past
something or something You know, if you get off, you know, you he's one
you've told him he's one then I realized after a while that it wasn't true
But nonetheless, you know as a kid this is the feedback one was getting
and you could see the utilitarian imperatives that had made that way of
thinking become ingrained in the culture.
However, what it always still came down to when, when you heard people talking
about good horsemen, or when the people really started talking about their horses.
It always came back to relationship, even that, but then
we sort of embarrassed about it.
And they'd be like, well, you know, we don't really want to admit that we're
sentimental or, you know, that we might.
You were allowed to say you loved your horse.
You were allowed to say you loved your dog.
You weren't really allowed to say you loved your kid
or
Rupert Isaacson: your wife or your, you know, or your mom.
But.
It's, you know, we come out of this militaristic society and pony club, you
know, we were all brought up that way.
This came out of the military, you know, and you could see how that
way of screaming at people and effectively making them fall off
actually might be quite useful.
If you were trying to train raw recruits for the cavalry, you know,
and they had to withstand screams, you know, stress falling off,
getting shot out of the saddle.
You know, that's why the sergeant screams in your face, so that,
you know, when you're under fire, you, you know, aren't so stressed.
Okay, in that battle situation, maybe That's useful.
But then what happens when you come out of the battle?
What happens if you're never in the battle?
What happens if you never wanted to be in a battle?
So I think so many of us and so many of our animals have had to
undergo this sort of approach
Which got looked at as a kind of a virtue because it created toughness,
resilience, that sort of thing
But did it really create resilience or did it just create desensitization
with Problematic traumatized behaviors that came out later, you know, and
the answer probably was often Sure.
So, when you guys were first putting T Touch together, as you said earlier
in this conversation, that Linda was about 20 years ahead of her time,
and I think you're right, you know, I think that, I remember when I first
started hearing about her, the type of conversation that we're having
now was not, by any means, the norm.
And, she must have, and you must have, encountered a lot of resistance.
How did you Deal with that.
I mean beyond the kind of okay.
Well, it's all right if people disagree with us But you know, you know, and
I know that you know people in the horse world can be pretty awful you
must have come in for your fair share of that especially in the early years.
What were your strategies for, for coping with that and staying sort
of true to your methods and seeing it sort of borne out over time?
Cause you also must have been asked to question yourselves a lot as well.
I'm sort of intrigued by how you weathered all of that.
And, you know,
Robyn Hood: Yeah, that's a good question.
I, I think that early on there were, because You know, we have articles
dating back to, you know, in the, I think in 1981, Practical Horseman
did a an article called Soften, How to Soften Your Horses Defenses, and
it was primarily about doing that.
It was, it turned into a little booklet, and it, it sold really well,
and from that, we ended up, then we'd start, we'd do these little
workshops, and we'd have people come.
So the people who came, you We're people who are looking for something.
Okay.
Robyn Hood: And so I, so I think that it, it kind of, feel the need.
So, for the most part.
We didn't have people coming.
They didn't pay money to come and go.
Well, this is a load of, you know, whatever.
And and I remember, remember, and when did we go to Australia?
We went to, we went and we did this transformation on the
trail in sometime in the 80s.
And I did a little demo.
We all, I went and I did a little two day demo and there was a couple
there who were He was shortlisted for the, for the Australian three
day team and they were lifelong horse people and so on and so forth.
And they saw it.
And then they, I was coming back to Australia, they organized for me to
come and do a seven day training because what they said was what they saw and
the change that they saw in the horse, they, they were smart enough to realize
that there must be something to it.
You know that I think that's the thing.
And so to be honest, some of the things that happen with
what we do sound ridiculous.
You know, it's just sounds like even, you know, I, I, I'm sometimes just shocked
at some of the things that happen.
And I like that because I, nothing makes me more sort of suspicious
of something when someone says, Oh, piece of cake, easy.
I can fix that that, you know, like these are beings we're working with,
with all these different circumstances.
So, I did have you know, I would have sometimes people come when they, and it
was hard if they brought their own horse.
And they tell the story and so on.
And then we could do things with their horse that they couldn't in
a very, very short period of time.
And we have to be really careful with that because.
It's hard for someone if you, you know, like, Oh, my horse won't let
anybody else do ABC, whatever it is.
And so we didn't like, go right into it, but we would kind of work
our way into that and soon we would be doing ABC that they had trouble
doing and no one else could do.
So you have to be really careful how you talk to those people because
they feel like what was wrong with me that I couldn't do it.
You know,
yeah,
Robyn Hood: exactly.
And we never wanted to have anyone feel like that.
It is not our interest in proving anything.
Nothing.
It's not our interest.
And so, I mean, I remember sometimes I would have, I remember one big
guy that came on a, on a weekend.
I was teaching.
And he stood there with his arms crossed and, you know, kind of
standing back, and then he, and then he started asking me these questions,
and he started asking me the, like, if I, looking at him, I was, you know,
thinking, oh, he's, you know, I'm not sure where the question's coming from.
But I, I took from him that his question was an honest question.
I just said, you know, like, and he said to me after, it was an honest question.
I really wanted.
I really wanted to hear your answer.
And so he got super interested and he trained a lot of horses.
He was with the RCMP and RCMP ride and so on and so forth.
And he started to come, he came to some clinics and he started to incorporate
some of the things that he did.
So the questions are, I love the questions.
I think it's really good because if there were no questions, there'd
be no answers and it's really the questions like they can be intimidating
depending on how you take it.
So I would say in the beginning, it was a bit of a challenge.
Although most of the animals that came to us, they came to us because they hadn't
been able to do anything else with them.
So it was like, it's the same with the dogs.
It was sort of like the last chance, you know, and, and so it, it was, yeah.
You know, I guess it was tricky but, and, and there would be, you know, of
course there's skeptics about, about everything but it was just kind of
holding, holding that place that if they were interested great if they
weren't, I'm not going to argue.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If you're a horse nerd, and if you're on this podcast, I'm guessing you are, then
you've probably also always wondered a little bit about the old master system.
of dressage training.
If you go and check out our Helios Harmony program, we outline there step by step
exactly how to train your horse from the ground to become the dressage horse
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Intrigued?
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Take it from there.
I remember.
When the great German dressage rider showing my age here Klaus Balkenholm.
Yeah
Rupert Isaacson: Started bringing Linda over to Germany and he was, you know, the
top winning dressage Olympic Ex policeman.
Not a particularly sentimental dude, I should imagine.
And yet, saw clearly the value of this work.
Tell us a little bit about that and how that evolved.
Because I think there will be people who are listening here who are also
sport and performance riders and so on and very much in that German tradition.
Why did he decide T Touch was a good thing?
And how did you observe and how did he observe that it, his performance horses?
Robyn Hood: Well, I wasn't there with Linda at any time with him, but
what I, what I, you know, understand and see, I think if people are
If they've done a lot with the horse, because my understanding is one of his
horses, he'd spent a lot of time with him, just time, and he would, as sentimental
or not, he would go in the stall, he would just spend time with the horse, and the
horse wasn't responding, and then Linda worked with him, and the horse made a
huge, like a huge response, and I don't know what year that was, but I know
that in the In 1989, when you know, Dr.
Klimka did his last big event at the L.
A.
Equestrian Center.
Rupert Isaacson: That's Reiner Klimka for those, those people
who were born in the last couple decades and don't know who that was.
He was probably the best.
Robyn Hood: And of course his daughter is Ingrid Klimka.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, his daughter's Ingrid.
Yeah.
Robyn Hood: Yeah.
And and he did.
So, so the scenario was he would take there would be 12 riders to from through
training level through Grand Prix to each to each and 2500 spectators.
Which is pretty intimidating to ride, you know, in front of that
Rupert Isaacson: Germans too.
Yeah.
Robyn Hood: Yeah.
Well, this was in LA.
Okay.
So he was the last one that he did.
And Linda was invited because Linda had met him Linda met
him before close Vulcan Hall.
And and I think, I think he was an amazing man I mean in terms of.
Just in terms of how he interacted with the horses and so on.
So anyway, she we did this.
So the night before it started, there was a little, there was a demo with
some of the horses that were in it.
So Linda did this demo.
We helped.
There were, I don't know, 20 practitioners there and we worked on
the horses in between the lessons.
And so it was fascinating.
There was a horse that had lost his Piaf, Grand Prix horse, but California
horse of the year, then lost the Piaf.
So, when Linda worked with him in the demo, one of the things we noticed is
he was very sensitive on his belly.
And so she would take the wand, you know, the stiff kind of dressage whip
and, and just stroke them all over.
And as.
She got to, he was known for putting boots on him or anything he would like,
he would kick out with his hind legs.
So people had to be careful.
Now, here's the reality.
If that horse wanted to hurt someone, he would.
He's
Robyn Hood: just saying, be careful, careful, be careful.
And they, they were careful.
So anyway, I was asked to work with him to do some body work with them in between.
I, this horse had, his sheath was so dirty, like, and he had
to be, have a general anesthetic to have his sheath cleaned.
General anesthetic.
So I started with him in the stall, and he's the horse that probably taught me
the most about listening to whispers.
And I started with my hand running, started just behind his ears, and just
really quietly running my hand across his body, and whenever he would, and I
mean just, Move in here a bit, I would pause and then I would go back to where
he did this ear or his mouth would move and I, and I worked my way back.
And when I got to the belly, I use the back of my hand.
First, I use the one, the same kind of thing, and I would just pause and then
I took the back of my hand and I worked along the belly and same, same deal.
I got to the sheath area.
I've never seen anything like it in my life.
He probably had two inches of hard shmegma inside the sheath.
Now tell me how you could do Piaf when you had It was that, that uncomfortable.
Rupert Isaacson: Where do you think that had come from?
And why was that in him and not in other horses?
Well, that's a very good question.
Robyn Hood: Very good question.
I don't know, but I think there's something systemically going on that
would create that amount of I don't know what it was, but it was hard.
What was interesting is, when I had listened to him And
this didn't take me very long.
In the first session, I worked with him for, I don't know, less than an hour.
But people would walk by and they'd go, Oh, have you tranquilized him?
Because he was standing there with his head down, no halter on, just
like, like he was tranquilized.
I said, no, but I could work on the outside of the sheet.
He actually wanted me, he wanted contact, because it must
have been so uncomfortable.
So I used the backs of my fingers and just did a bit.
And then I was able to get some, this Excalibur, some softening.
It's a, you know, A product that softens the inside and around the sheath area.
I was able to get it softened and then I was able to get warm water.
I couldn't take anything off because it's like having thick
scabs, but I could soften it.
And by the 3rd day he had pee off.
Interesting,
Robyn Hood: which was, I think was so interesting, but it was fascinating
at this at this event because we, of course, we're showing people
how to use the balance, right?
You know, it's like a second rain around the base of the neck used as a second
rain to just steady the horse and made a huge difference to some of the horses.
And we also put some body wraps and promise wraps, which just went
around the back end of the horse.
And of course, at lunchtime at the L.
A.
Equestrian Center, the people that boarded there, there were like, you know,
20 or 30 horses out there, you know, trying it with their own horses, which
was great, you know, just to be able to kind of offer that and, you know, Dr.
Clinton was such a gracious man.
And, you know, he said he'd never seen so many changes in horses and
riders in such a short period of time.
And he really attributed it to Linda coming in and the work that we did,
which he didn't need to do that.
He's just an amazingly gracious gracious man.
So that was a It was interesting because most of the people that were
there were, were either competitors or really interested in the sport.
Certainly some kind of kind of sport riders.
Now, Linda's also worked with people like Anne Krasinski, who
was on the American jumping team.
And she did a demo with her at Wellington in Florida and had all these people
standing around watching this horse who was known for rushing fences Linda
worked with her, got her riding with a neck ring, nothing else on, and
jumping four foot oxers, coming in really balanced, jumping them, not
rushing after them, slowing down, and it was, it was quite a shock for them.
So, if people see that there can be a difference, then they become interested.
Now, can they always kind of carry, carry on with it?
Because some things Require that we as a human have to make some changes.
And, you know, there's only one thing on this earth that we
have the potential to control.
And that's ourselves.
And when we change something, something will change.
So I always say to people, if something isn't working, I don't care what it
is, just change something a little bit, or pause, or just take a moment.
But just that, that in itself can, can make a huge difference, makes a
difference between how a horse reacts, how a dog reacts, how a person reacts.
Rupert Isaacson: is writing this down.
If something isn't working, change something.
Robyn Hood: And it's so obvious.
It's just that we get so stuck in our, you know, we get so stuck in our
habits because they're so easy to do.
Rupert Isaacson: The devil we know.
And neural pathways that You know, and it doesn't matter that was it Einstein
who said, you know, Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting over and
Robyn Hood: over and expecting a different result.
Rupert Isaacson: But it's also natural human behavior.
And I think one has got to have a bit of compassion for
oneself and for people this way.
I know when we're Teaching people our methods and so on so much of it is
counterintuitive And I think writers don't get enough credit for this The
entire process of doing anything with a horse is counterintuitive both for
the monkey and for the pony You know, we are their predator in the wild So
their instinct is not to let us any certainly not within bow shot or spear
chucking yet they will and They're not designed to take us on their backs.
They will.
We're not designed to balance up there.
We're top heavy, big shoulders, you know, heavy head, wobbling
around on that moving barrel.
Yet, we do.
And if you, you know, when we feel anxious or even unfamiliar
with something, we crouch.
We go into a A sort of a sympathetic nervous system crouch where we can
protect our organs, throw a punch and run away all in the same movement.
We can't do that on a horse, so we'll fall out the front door.
And then of course, we're monkeys, so we want opposable thumbs, so we want to solve
things with our hands and cling on tight to things, and we can't do that either.
So the very fact that any of it can work at all, I'm always intrigued given
that it Both the horse and the human have to go against instinct so much.
And we're also angry, you know, we're angry chimpanzees and
we've got to control that too.
It's, it's, it's, it's a miracle it can happen and yet it does.
So I think that people like you and Linda coming along and Helping to
make that process more joyful, to me, is really the epitome of what
equine assisted means, because in this day and age, we don't need horses.
Some cowboys do.
I would argue that with the therapeutic work that we do, actually that is
optimised by the movement of the horse, so okay, maybe that's a necessary job
for a horse, but we certainly don't need them for transport anymore.
Luckily we don't need them for war.
So the reason why do we have horses?
We have horses.
They make us feel good.
Why do we feel good around horses?
And then sometimes we do things or have experience with horses
that get in the way of that joy.
And then we can end up
thrashing away at that neural pathway.
The very thing that we were hoping would make us so joyful, that we were so
attracted to as a child, the beauty, the freedom, the power, the romance, the dream
like quality of horses, and then suddenly there we are in a cage, being screamed
at, you know, by another monkey, you know, being told, wrong, wrong, you know.
So you guys make it better.
You open that door to joy, and I've seen it.
I've seen it working.
And I felt it in my own body.
I've had Linda put her hands on me and gone, Oh my gosh, this is extraordinary.
If somebody is running a program, and, you know, equine assisted programs
are often Staff, the equines in those programs are often donated horses.
Donated horses are usually donated for a reason.
They're usually messed up.
They've, they've, they've been broken to some degree.
And they're, they may be working the program because they're quiet.
One frequently sees unhappy horses, stiff horses, horses clearly in pain.
And of course, how are these horses supposed to transmit well being
when they themselves don't have it?
If you were to give advice To somebody who was going into this field and getting
their horses from these disparate sources.
What would be your main go tos and piece of advice that, you know, you're in the
pub, someone says, Hey, Robin, I'm gonna start this thing and I'm gonna start
working with autistic kids, or I'm gonna start working with veterans, or I'm gonna
start working with people with trauma.
And yeah, I've got the, you know, some therapy, some
donation horses are coming in.
You probably in your mind would go, Ooh, yeah, I can kind of picture what some
of these horses will be coming in with.
What would your go to one, two, three, to be sure to look out for
and to be sure to do and to be sure to not do be to that person?
Robyn Hood: Good, good question.
I the first thing that That that I do when I kind of see a horse that somebody asked
me to look at the horse, whatever it is.
And I, I kind of get a sense of, first of all, what their overall response
is for just when humans are near them.
And that doesn't mean that I can't.
influence how they feel about humans.
Because there are, there are some horses that once you then, because then I,
I would see if I could put my hands on, start with the back of the hand,
where can you actually make contact?
What's the horse's response to that contact?
So that I can That I can, I guess it depends on also what they're
going to be using the horses for, you know, like, are they expected?
Are they, are they for riding?
Because not all horses are in the, in the, you know, equine assisted therapy.
They're not all for riding.
So that would be one thing that I would what I would, you know, kind of look at.
And then also, the thing is, when we do TTouch on horses, We have so frequently
been able to make pretty dramatic changes in, especially in their, and
I want to say, I don't, attitude.
It's not really that it's their attitude.
It's their experience, their prior experience with humans.
And when you change that, that experience, because you treat them in a different way.
It, it changes them because, you know, we get horses on our farm.
Now, mostly we board horses, but even when I have horses that come up here for
clinics and they have, you know, people will say they do this, this and this.
You hardly ever do it here because we have a different energy
about the attitude that we have.
About the horses and what we expect them to do.
So, I mean, I would encourage anybody to learn even basics of tea touch so
that they can go over the horse and have the horse learn, learn from the
horse, you know, that they'll let the horse know they'll listen to them.
I think that's it is absolutely really is really critical.
And, and of course, I mean, obviously, do you ride most of your horses with saddles?
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
I'm not averse to riding bareback.
But in general, we would ride it with a saddle.
Yeah.
Robyn Hood: No, no, I just, because I mean, I think that's the other
huge challenge is finding saddles that are going to be functioning
well for the horse and, and for the riders, because it's not just enough
that it's for the, for the horse.
So, I mean, there's a lot of things that have to go in, into it.
I, I also would ask them, what's the lifestyle going to be for this horse?
You know, what, you know, are, do they, are they going to have
friends if they have friends?
Do they have enough space to have friends?
You know, like that, because that can be having friend, frenemies can
be worse if you don't have enough space to get away from them, you
know, that, that sort of thing.
So it's not really I can't say that I have enough experience with looking for horses,
but I, I would be looking for horses that I would call functionally sound.
That's to me because none of us are necessarily a hundred percent sound,
but it does depend on what you're going to do with them and how you're going to
ask them and what you're going to do.
And I had a little bit of a theory about,
you know, about this concept of us because a lot of writers period,
whether they're able bodied or not, are not very well balanced.
Now, if you have a course I'm going to say that about
Rupert Isaacson: myself, honestly.
Robyn Hood: Yeah, for sure.
If you have a horse that always has to carry the same rider with the
same, with their same imbalances and doing things exactly the same way.
Is it possible that it can be actually a little bit easier for horses that
carry different riders that maybe have slightly different imbalances, so it's
not constantly being created the same one because I see some less than horses.
And as you were saying earlier, there are horses that kind of go
along and kind of do their job.
And and they're, you know, they're pretty happy about it,
depending on the rider and so on.
And I wonder, though, if that isn't for in some cases.
if it doesn't balance out their body a little bit easier than having the same,
same old, same old rider who does things.
I don't know.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, no, so I think, I think, I think what you put your
finger on there is the difference in chronic repetitive and novel.
Yeah, we, we encourage people to do as much in hand work as possible, long
reigning as possible, that sort of thing.
And incorporate that into the sessions because otherwise you'll never have
time to do it, you know, just build that back as much as you can so that it has a
sporting chance of carrying some weight, you know, but it's, it's interesting
how this type of thing is not normally.
Part of the conversation around therapeutic stuff.
It's usually all about how you serve the person, which of course is
vitally important But it leaves out if the horse hasn't got well being.
Well, how how how are you going to track?
So your point too about how is the horse living?
I think is also a very good one.
Is there enough space that if they are living socially it's
functional not dysfunctional?
Because of course now keeping horses in boxes has gotten a bad name.
And I go around so many different stables and I see horses living in every
possible way from having half of the state of Wyoming as their, you know,
thing, or probably, you know, Alberta to, for example, we've got a project
with Horseboy in the middle of Dublin, like in the middle of the city, and
no, the horses have to be in boxes.
Now, it's mitigated by the fact that they get a lot of free movement in
the arena, and they get regularly rotated out to fields in County Meath.
So, you know, people are, you know, they're approaching it rationally and
they're approaching it compassionately.
But I don't think those horses are unhappy at all, because the way
they're engaged and the way that they're worked is Sympathetic.
And I've seen horses that are kept in rather naturalistic
environments be quite depressed.
So it's interesting I've realized that there's no hard and fast rules about
these things It's so much of it seems to be and you were talking about patting
horses, you know, do they like it?
Do they hate it?
Well, I think so much of it is about the intention behind it You know, if
you hug someone and they pat you on the back that can feel immensely supportive.
It can feel also absolutely awful depending on how they pat you and
what the intention is behind the pat.
So I think one of the things I love about your work.
is that the intention is paramount.
You know, I've, I've, I've heard Linda say it so often, put your heart in your hands
and then put your hands on the horse.
And of course, that could be with a person too.
And I remember the first time I heard her say that, I went, Oh, of course.
But Do I do that?
And then as soon as I started consciously doing that, I heard
her say that at Equitano once.
I was like, Oh my gosh, it made such a difference.
And then another thing which I heard from T Touch was Instead of
trying to make your horse feel safe,
or project safety, just project the thought, I.
I'm safety.
I am safe.
I am safety and see what that does yours.
And I started doing it and horses just started coming
and standing right next to me.
So it's so interesting how you guys have, you know, there's great
complexity to your work once you begin and subtlety to your work.
And we started this conversation with Feldenkrais and so on and the
multiple, multiple different ways in which you can touch and feeling
out and listening to the horse.
And yet at the same time, you don't make it so Vague and impossible to follow
there are no steps and you you you you do actually narrow it down to certain
ways to touch that Any of us can do or certain intentions that we can put into
our bodies That are going to transfer that emotion to the horse and it works.
It works.
It works So if people wanted to learn more, how do they do it?
How do they get in touch with you and then if they want to become say a practitioner?
What's the process by which they'd have to go?
Robyn Hood: We, because of COVID, like, you know, before COVID,
I, I traveled five months of the year for pretty much 30 years.
And I loved it, and I didn't think that I had any other choice, you
know, you do what you do, right?
And then COVID hit, and so I had time to put things online, because I wanted
to for years, but I just didn't, I was never home long enough to do it.
And we have a platform called learn.
ttouch.
ca And on that Learn.
ttouch.
ca.
And we have on it, we have some free like little mini module courses
too that like one for horses and a couple for dogs and one for cats.
So people can just like register and they don't pay anything.
They get that, they get that module and kind of takes you
through the, the aspects of it.
Now we have.
We also then have courses that are on very like specific things.
I have a body wrapping, self paced course and intro to T Touch and so on.
And then we have these, the core elements course.
If people want to be practitioners or go deeper into it, I started
doing them for the last almost year is immersion courses where I take
people over Six months actually.
And they, so they, they have lifetime access to the online, which has many,
many hours of the topics broken into pieces and video and PowerPoint and so on.
And then in the immersion classes, I add more information.
Plus we discuss things and go into the detail and.
It's actually worked it's worked really well.
We have a, we have a practitioner in India, the first practitioner in India.
She did it all online and she presented actually at our celebration.
The changes the healing that she's had from dogs and cats in India, and she
has a kind of a private rescue and she works with lots of different rescues.
Phenomenal.
I mean, animals that were given no hope and and and some
of them like in one session.
And as she said, you know, no one was more surprised than than I was.
And again, you know, as I said before, I've done this.
I've done this now for over 40 years and.
I'm still surprised when it works.
And so is Linda.
And I love that because I would hate to do something that you felt so,
oh, you do this because you can't know, we know that there'll be a
change, but we don't know what.
And that's the, you know, the part of looking for it.
So there's a lot that can be done online.
I'm, I'm going to Linda's going to be.
Not sure how much she'll be in Europe this year.
She'll be in Ewa.
I'm coming for a few days for Ewa, just to
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, you well, great.
We'll meet then.
'cause we'll be there.
Yeah,
Robyn Hood: yeah, yeah.
I, I'll be there for the last three days to be at the party, the
50th anniversary party and so on.
Rupert Isaacson: 50
years.
Gosh.
Wow.
Robyn Hood: I know.
It's, it's, it's just, it's just remarkable.
And you know, I just have to say, I mean, my sister, there's
nobody that is as she's just.
She cares a lot and she's just so open to to to people.
She'll do a lot for people and I, you know, she's really very, very remarkable.
And then I'll be in England doing something with horses and
dogs in April in France in April as well, doing a few things.
And then in Holland.
Just doing the work with dogs in Holland.
So ideally, and we do have practitioners in different countries,
too, that are doing workshops.
So, so because we don't do so many in person things, my concept of this online
is that if people can also go to workshops with people who are You know, who are
qualified practitioners and get the hands on portion, because what they have to
do is demonstrate to us through video or in person or whatever a competency
that,
Robyn Hood: you know, that that's, that's the thing.
And I mean, the beauty of this is that.
Even if you know a little bit you can that you can really help and the more
you know in some ways the less you teach I mean because you try to pare it
down to what might be the most helpful for that person in in that moment.
Rupert Isaacson: So if somebody wanted to go down the route or serve learning to
become a practitioner and or eventually trainer, it all starts with learn dot.
Yeah,
Robyn Hood: or going to if you, if you have the availability of
going to a workshop with someone, of course, that can be your first.
Rupert Isaacson: But would you find those workshops on that website?
Robyn Hood: The website, the website that you're going to find the
international ones on is, is ttouch.
com.
Rupert Isaacson: ttouch.
com.
Okay.
So if I'm sitting in.
London or Dubai or Rio de Janeiro.
And I want to see if there's a trainer or practitioner near me
that I can go to a live course with.
That will be ttouch.
com.
Robyn Hood: Yeah, that'll, that'll give you, there are some, like the
German ones aren't on because they're, they have their own guild site.
There are, I don't know the names of all the websites of the specific
countries, like Germany has, has, A lot of practitioners, Austria.
Just trying to think of what countries have active websites right now?
Switzerland, probably the uk South Africa.
Would there
Rupert Isaacson: be links to those sites on T Touch,
Robyn Hood: yes.
On t touch.com,
there are links to the international Okay.
Perfect Sites.
And if they don't see something on like the site or a pro or
a listing or whatever, if they go to one of those, that's.
The best the best response.
I, of
Rupert Isaacson: course, found the German one.
It's ttouch.
de.
Yeah, there
Robyn Hood: you go.
There you go.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Which, by the way, immediately translated to English.
Robyn Hood: Yeah, no, it's a good, it's a really good website.
Rupert Isaacson: But if, if people know that ttouch.
com is the sort of central hub, and then they could find some links to
what's relevant to their country there.
Yeah.
But if they want to learn online, it's learn.
Dot t
Robyn Hood: touch dot c a.
And actually the a lot of the online courses if they're if
they're with zoom attachments like with zoom classes will also be on
the t touch dot com events page.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, well, luckily for us, my wife is heading
down the practitioner path.
Robyn Hood: Yes, she is.
Our
Rupert Isaacson: horses benefit massively.
And I couldn't support it more.
I think that.
I know that, I see that, what you guys do is not only something
that's special to you and Linda, but it's highly transferable.
I've seen lots of people learn it and get amazing outcomes with
their animals and with each other.
Robyn Hood: And, you know, I think that's the, the thing Linda's always been.
I mean, the whole thing we've been so open to what we want to share the work.
If you're interested, we're, we're happy to teach you.
We're not going to, we're not going to try to make, we're not going to try to
convince someone that they, that they need to learn it, but we're absolutely there.
And it doesn't matter if Linda can do it, or if I can do it, or if other
teachers, the aim of it is to teach the average person to be able to do
it with their own animal, because it really, you know, we can't, you We can't
have every animal, so it makes sense that we can teach people how to do it.
That, that's really, that's the deal.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely, you know, it's, it, I think
the other thing which is so
immediately apparent when one goes to a T Touch event is the
loving quality of the community.
And you know, with us, with Horseboy, it's quite similar.
It's an international community of people that really support each other
and really like each other and go out of their way to try and help each other.
And I've really seen that with the T Touch community.
It's, I think the sort of person who's attracted to it is always.
Connected, caring human.
So when you get a bunch of them together, it's a very nice place to be.
I'm looking forward to Ecuador 2020.
We saw
Robyn Hood: that at the celebration.
We had some, we had a number of people that were pretty new.
I don't even know how they got there, but they, they were just struck by
the welcoming part of this kind of this, you know, family community.
And It's so much fun to just meet new people and, and and have them, you know,
just become engaged in the work, but they, you know, they have to have a, they
have to have interest, you know, it's like there's a, there's, there's a reason
that, you know, that things that things happen, that things happen as they do.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
And you know, in the world of factionalism and rivalry that can
so often typify the horse world.
It's such a breath of fresh air to come across people like you, so hats off.
Robyn Hood: Thank you.
Thank you.
I mean, it's fun.
I wouldn't do it if it's fun.
It's like we had a great keynote speaker that she's that spent a year
with me before she went into vet school and and she said her theory is this.
If it's not fun, don't do it.
And if you have to do it, make it fun.
And I'm writing that
Rupert Isaacson: one down too.
If it's not fun, don't do it.
And if it's not fun.
Robyn Hood: No, if you have to do it.
Rupert Isaacson: And if you have to do it.
Robyn Hood: Yeah.
Thank you.
And if you have
Rupert Isaacson: to do it.
Make it
fun.
Lovely words to live by.
Robyn Hood: They, yeah, they are.
She gave such a great presentations and you know, about working with
senior, do you know, senior animals?
And she had just such she was fun.
It was a great, great presentation and it was, we just had, we had a lot of fun.
A lot of fun.
At the, at the subway.
Rupert Isaacson: Who was that?
Who was that speaker?
Robyn Hood: Her name is Stephanie Cote.
C-O-T-E-C.
Rupert Isaacson: Cote as in the, like in the French?
Robyn Hood: Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, we'll, we'll look up.
Sounds like someone I should have on the show.
Robyn Hood: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
She's amazing.
Stephanie with a
Rupert Isaacson: PH, I'm writing it down.
Yeah,
Robyn Hood: PH.
Stephanie with a PH.
I can, I can
Rupert Isaacson: get
Robyn Hood: you her email if you like.
You
Rupert Isaacson: do.
That would be grand.
Robyn Hood: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, Robin, it's been an honor.
Thank you so much for coming on and giving us wisdom.
Robyn Hood: My
Rupert Isaacson: pleasure.
My pleasure.
It
Robyn Hood: was so nice to meet you, and I look forward to seeing you in Germany.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
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