Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
Here on Equine Assisted World.
We look at the cutting edge and the best practices currently being developed and,
established in the equine assisted field.
This can be psychological, this can be neuropsych, this can be
physical, this can be all of the conditions that human beings have.
These lovely equines, these beautiful horses that we work with, help us with.
Thank you for being part of the adventure and we hope you enjoy today's show
Welcome.
, back to, , equine Assisted World.
, today we've got someone amazing.
, of course everyone on here is always amazing.
, we've got Dr.
Rebecca Bailey, , the Polyvagal Equine Institute.
, it's something new, it's something cutting edge.
, Dr.
Bailey is at the helm.
, and there's a lot of questions we want to ask her.
What, what is polyvagal?
What's this poly word?
What's this vagal word?
How can it help us?
What do we need to learn from this?
What, you know, how can this help us in our practice?
, I think a lot of us are familiar with the idea of a sympathetic and
a parasympathetic nervous system, an autonomic nervous system, and these are
words that have been creeping in over the years, and now suddenly there's this
polyvagal thing and what does this mean?
And oh my gosh, is this another thing that I have to get right or
wrong or, , you know, et cetera.
So, so, so, Dr.
Bailey's gonna help us to understand this and, , to bring in how this
can help us in our practices.
, I don't want to take away from, , Dr.
Bailey's.
, Knowledge of herself.
So I'm not going to do too much of a bio.
However, , Dr.
Betty comes from a long, , tradition, , with horses and
of course with mental health.
, she is a east coast transplant that moved to the west coast about 35 years
ago and has been working in the field of trauma and recovery from trauma
and resilience for a number of years.
Has published books, , has been on multiple, , media shows.
You can find her all over the place.
You can find her on, , Diane Sawyer.
You can find her on all these things, but it's quite rare that we can engage her
one-to-one and get her to really clear up for us what is this polyvagal thing?
How does it help us?
and what do we need to know?
so Dr.
Bailey, thanks for coming on.
Welcome.
Who are you,
Rebecca Bailey: first of all, Rupert.
I am so, stoked to meet you.
Finally, after I think you and I have been, Plotting, you were certainly
ahead of the herd, but but been plotting in the same pastures for many years.
And, I've heard over the years that you and I would either meet and endure each
other or combust, in our connection.
So, I don't know.
Let's see what happens.
I am a psychologist who I like to say was raised by a horse.
I think my first experience in co-regulation was a
little horse named Locket.
I grew up back east, as you said, and had two sisters that were
very accomplished equestrians.
And I was the rollie pulley pudding P pie popping around
on the horse in the backyard.
And here I am all these years later.
So in 19, about 1989, I got very into animal assisted therapy and
doing it as something, and not just the dogs and horses in my life at
the time in my graduate school.
I was told after I did a master's thesis, don't tell anybody,
you'll discredit yourself.
And really cool fact.
What I found back then, I didn't even realize what I'd found was a
variable with women that had horses.
It was an N of 70.
which means a group of 70 versus 70 women that didn't have animals at all.
And what I found was a very, very high, leadership criteria, meaning
that they had the ability to do what we call military leadership.
And this isn't the bang, bang, shoot 'em up leadership.
This is the ability to lead from within and next to now.
Ironically, Linda Kahani wrote about this many years later
in her power of the Herd book.
So what I had discovered with this particular, master thesis I did, that
we who have horses who are dedicated to understanding and listening to
horses have this ability to lead and connect with them, which is really
at the core of regulation and co regulation and polyvagal theory.
So take me back, guide me back.
Focus me back in, sir, as I go off into
Rupert Isaacson: the, I got, I got like five questions that I
just wrote down for myself there.
I'm gonna come back to them in a minute.
quick and easy one, what do you do?
Rebecca Bailey: That's a very good question.
I am a psychologist who has been doing, extreme.
I don't like to use the word trauma because everybody says that.
So I like to say extreme, complex cases for about the last 30 years.
now I am the co-director of the Polyvagal Equine Institute with my colleagues
Margie McDonald and JC Dugard, who was a young woman abducted health
captive of which the horses brought back into life, into regular life.
So I'm a psychologist, I am an educator, I'm a trainer, and I'm a goofball.
Rupert Isaacson: Me too.
the goofball bit, not the other bits.
okay, so what is the Polyvagal Equine Institute?
Rebecca Bailey: So the Polyvagal Equine Institute is our attempts
and desire to, we maybe put a different lens on equine treatment.
And I know we're supposed to say equine something, something, and I
always get it wrong being a dyslexic.
So I just call it.
Equine interventions, equine, whatever.
I've never figured this out for many years.
But what we're, we're trying to do, and what we are doing is training people for
professional awareness and understanding of not only themselves, their clients, but
the incredible colleagues that are these incredible horses that they work with.
So for many years I've been doing interventions with the equine work.
I've morphed like everybody else.
But what was really missing to me was, was the understanding of the
dance between nervous systems.
People understand this, that as we were discussing earlier, that do classical
dressage, they understand that piece.
But what was missing in equine therapy was when you're on the ground, this
connection between the nervous systems, what you bring in, what the horse brings
in, and what the client brings in.
So this was part of what we said.
We really want to push the field a little bit forward in using, in, in teaching
other people about this modality, and then also enhancing other treatment modalities.
For example, and I can say it to you because you're, you.
I've had a few people that have gone through psychedelic treatment
and have come here after they've had months, after they've had
their journeys and surprise it.
There are people that would laugh who've known me all these years, particularly
with my old Grateful Dead experience.
We ground them, post those experiences and help them maybe process and
understand that experience in a different way, if that makes sense.
So our program, our trainings also enhance other treatment modalities.
Rupert Isaacson: What was your Grateful Dead experience?
Rebecca Bailey: Well, I was the maid of honor to the, bass player and his wife,
my ex-husband worked for them and the bass player named two children after,
my ex-husband and my brother-in-law.
And then my horse, Dr.
Velcro, who many people know, black and White horse was given to me by
Billy Kitzman, the drummer's, wife.
And so I had long, the eighties were one big blur of Grateful Dead concerts.
And then I got my act together at the end of the eighties and went to grad school.
Rupert Isaacson: Alright, so there, there's something I'd
like to, to, to go there.
I, I didn't have this in my notes, but this is interesting to me
because, not every listener will be familiar with the Grateful Dead.
So, we have, you know, listeners all over the world, so I'll just
quickly fill in the Grateful Dead.
Were some would even say are, The sort of seminal 1960s counterculture.
But of course they went over decades.
but you could argue that they were really the f the, the, the,
the, the, the spokespeople of the counterculture, certainly within the usa.
And they came out of the West coast with a type of psychedelic music and exploration
and people associated them with drugs, people associated them with hippie stuff
correctly and of course incorrectly.
And that they were also purveys of a sudden kind of Americana.
if you really break the music down it, a lot of it is actually
Celtic with sort of African roots, which one could say is Americana.
But they took it to a, a level of sort of consciousness that
attracted bazillions of people.
And so the Grateful Dead concerts were like a mo, a festival that
was sort of constantly going around America over, over many, many decades.
And it's interesting how many people, one meets who have gone on to all sorts
of interesting things, who had a sort of seminal shamanic one could say, experience
or number of experiences through this particular part of the counterculture.
And those who know me know that, you know, I've, I've had a lot of experiences
in the Shamanic, and I would say that a Grateful Dead concert, what people
called a dead show, was a very viable shamanic experience, healing experience,
formative experience within the confines of our post World War ii, post witch
burning, post Auschwitz, post, you know, colonialism and everything else, culture.
so it's, it's very interesting to me that you, you bring up the fact
that you had a, a grounding in this.
How do you feel, what do you feel, before we go back to polyvagal, what, what do
you feel that your, participation in this aspect of the Western counterculture
did for you within the horse and equine assisted world to sort of open
your mind and heart to the greater possibilities of what we could do?
What, what, what detail?
So
Rebecca Bailey: cool.
No wonder people were saying we can bust because Absolutely.
I, when I met and kind of fell into the connection with all those guys,
it was, it went about 16 or 17 and very repressed Boston society and came
into this place where was asked to see the whole world from a different
perception, getting to know Jerry Garcia.
Well, being part of that connection.
Learned a lot about, again, again, how leadership is about
leading within and about and part of the collective conscience.
And people like, you know, like you say, it's funny, somebody yesterday
was saying, oh, but we're using psychedelia now in a different way.
It's not a social thing like that.
And I'm like, you don't get it.
You don't get it.
These people there, there was, Joseph Campbell used to come to the concerts.
I mean, there was this understanding of the collective consciousness and
our responsibility to each other.
So, God, there's so many things where we could go to, I mean, for example,
my great great great, great great grandmother was hung as a witch in Salem.
And so I even in all of this sort of shamanic releasing of intergenerational
trauma, I think what all of this that all connected me to was an embracement
of the passion and all it's me.
Mm-hmm.
And I know if it wasn't for my connection with those guys and the band and all those
people, I would never have felt that.
I would never, you
Rupert Isaacson: conjured some names there for people.
Again, Jerry Garcia was the band leader of the Grateful Dead.
if you dunno who he was, you, you just do a quick wiki because you
could, you could argue that many of the more progressive, aspects of our
culture emanated through that man.
Joseph Campbell.
Just talk to us a little bit about who Joseph Campbell was.
Rebecca Bailey: Well, Jo Joseph Campbell, was an amazing, amazing,
I think, what would we call him?
A Jungian, theorist and wrote, what the heck?
I'm gonna block on the name nephrologist.
Really?
Right here?
Yes.
Yes, yes.
And he really talked about bringing sort of shamanic concepts back, talking
about the journeys that we all go on in our life and, and in things.
He, he broke into a society that weren't counterculture people.
Right.
He broke into dining rooms and living rooms and cocktail parties of
Rupert Isaacson: academics and academics and
Rebecca Bailey: establishment people like that who were saying, you
know, who were able to say sorry.
Were able to say, oh my gosh, this makes sense.
This isn't dancing in the, in the hallways.
and it's sort of all melted together into this great big understanding.
I keep saying the collective consciousness.
And so here we go to polyvagal theory.
We were learning about the mix of nervous systems and how we all impact each other,
and how the collective consciousness is the responsibility of all of us.
Mm-hmm.
and not going off into any political realm.
Just saying these, this understanding that my hand affects
your hand affects this hand.
And so that became the core of the polyvagal work we did.
With trauma, understanding that it's not the central victim
or survivor in front of you.
It's this system.
The parents, the friends, the, you know, law enforcement, the judge,
all of this that are impacting the individual system in front of us.
All the stuff that herds of horses show us if we sit down and watch.
Rupert Isaacson: It's really interesting.
I, I've had, quite a lot of experience with, one could say wild people.
I lived with, bushman hunter gatherers, on and off for quite a while, and one
of their central tenants, is that if there's any suffering, any sickness, any
dilemma within the community, it's always actually a joint responsibility, what
you would call collective consciousness.
That, and that's why everybody must come together at the transfer.
And it could be, gosh, it could be anything from someone's actually got some
major health problem to someone's got a psychosis to, there's just a, a couple
who are arguing a lot and it's disrupting a little bit the harmony of the village.
Or it could just be a sort of general washing of the psychic
dirty laundry of the whole community just to keep everybody cool.
but at its fundamental level, there's this, this, acceptance that there is a,
joint responsibility for the whole thing.
And you don't hear this spoken about very often in the west because we have, you
know, this myth of the rugged individual and so on and so forth, and that we're
all just sort of out there, a dog eat dog.
But we, we know that's not really how life is.
So, Talk to me a little bit about how polyvagal theory helps inform us if
we're coming out of a Western tradition.
Okay.
And we're not just yeah, familiar with this Ultraman thing.
How does this help us understand and get to grips with all of this?
So,
Rebecca Bailey: just to go back, just because, just so for example, 25 years
divorce kind of separated myself from this core of herd of people that had
connected, built a different life.
My house in barn burns down and the whole community burns.
And the leader of the BA Jerry Garcia's daughter contacts me out
of the blue, offers me her house for a month where my, and I hadn't
seen her, I haven't seen her since.
I didn't see her after she just said, Hey, I heard you were in trouble.
So I, the reason I'm saying that is that that just underscores what you're
talking about, like the responsibility.
It doesn't mean that I live next to you and check in on you all the time.
It doesn't mean anything.
It just means that even from afar, I hear you're sorrow and I help and I'm
there in some way, whatever way I can be.
So how does this commit with the whole polyvagal?
So the polyvagal studies of Dr.
Steven Porges, who is the, sort of the creator inventor researcher of polyvagal
theory, really looks about how it kind of, the way I boil it down really boils
down to this very simple aspect that.
Human beings have the strive, have the drive to survive.
And everything we do is around the service of survival.
And as the vagal pathways evolved over millions and millions of years, this
social engagement pathway in what we call the ventral vagal developed, and this
social engagement pathway is the core of compassion and curiosity and connection.
So how this all fits is to really understand that in our western view,
we've toppled a little bit in my mind over in therapeutic interventions
into, you know, brain stuff.
We do bottom down, meaning from the brain down to the body.
Well, what polyvagal theory says, and at least from my interpretation, and I really
do believe it's a growing fields where, you know, we've gotta be very careful
to not say you're wrong and I'm right.
But from our perception with the horses, when I say polyvagal, it's the top down,
the top, the bottom up learning is at the core of the essence of the work we do.
Meaning that it's in how we get into our body to feel it in the
body and then respond in, in a.
Slow manner or fast, depending on whether we're in a survival state,
but in order to then process it.
And often we process based on old narratives that have nothing
to do with the present moment.
So it's
Rupert Isaacson: a big Mel.
Okay.
So, so, so you talk about the body informing the brain, which, you know,
let's, we could, we could talk, you know, gut, heart, brain and so on.
There is this thing called the vagus nerve, the wandering nerve.
it's the largest nerve in our body.
Okay.
Can you explain to us what the function of this nerve is?
And then from that, I'm gonna ask you why the word poly?
Do we have more than one vagal nerve or is it that we have
multiple effects from this nerve?
Or is it Yes, somewhat.
Both.
Okay.
So what is the vagal nerve and what does it
Rebecca Bailey: do?
Okay, so if you're a cardiologist listening to me, you're gonna be rolling
your eyes and saying, lady, come on.
I'm not having you do heart surgery with me.
So I want you to understand that one of the, the areas about the vagal
nerve visit, it is very multifaceted.
It has really important roles in our body.
I am not a neurosurgeon, so I'm gonna come at it from my simplistic psychologist
perspective for me, the vagal pathways.
And yes, there are two vagal nerves, which for dyslexic, this drives me crazy.
Why not call it two nerves?
But there's one on the left and one on the right.
Okay?
That intervene, go through all major organs in our many
major organs through our body.
Also go up into the rated nerves in the face, meaning up above those eyes, those
nerves right there, I, you can't see it because you're listening, but around the
eyes, and above on the forehead, and then also they innervate into that inner ear.
For me, the most important role of the vagal nerves is assessing
what gorgeous calls neuroception.
Am I safe?
Am I not safe?
Now what that, that that means is in response to a sense of safety or
survival, you're gonna have different aspects of the body that respond.
So for example, in very, very, very old, old evolutionary days, the only
way we could respond to threat, not we, but our great, our, you know, reptile
ancestors, was to shut down and, save our resources as much as possible.
Breathe really slow, feign death, whatever that was.
Same possible.
Basically.
Yes.
And hope that the predator would go away or whatever that was.
So that was the only, only survival stance that we had.
Then through evolution, the sympathetic pathways developed.
Fight or flight, get out of there, right.
Move, move, whatever that is.
And then from there, the ventral vagal pathways and the ventral
vagal pathways are the pathways.
It's much more complicated than what I say, so please, I know that.
But the ventral vagal pathways are what allows us to socially connect.
Now, to be in a regulated stage, regulated state, to be able to sit, have
this conversation, to be able to hug each other, mobilize without fear, we
have to have ventral vagal oversight.
So that's something by the word
Rupert Isaacson: oversight,
Rebecca Bailey: what does that mean?
Pathway needs to be engaged as well.
Okay.
So that's one of the mis misunderstandings.
I do believe it's pretty black and white, although, you know,
next week I could be wrong, but I, this is how I operationalize this.
So I look at it when that horse, you're going along and the horse sees a rock and
stop, you know, startles and if you are in the position to calm yourself down,
be with the horse, then the horse kind of engages and gets signs of safety from you.
And then you go forward or the horse tells you it's safe and you go forward.
I have a horse that's terrified of turkeys and I cannot ride her on a, a trip.
Yeah.
Cause if a Turkey goes by, she rears up and pause and I jump off
and it's just, you know, and I, some rearing horses I can take.
She, she just scares the crap outta me.
But one of my friends who's 20 years younger, she goes out bareback with
me and a Turkey goes and up goes freia and up goes hope and they trot off.
You know what I mean?
So that's a really good exempt like example of the dance
between two nervous systems.
Rupert Isaacson: what is what you're saying then that, that
it's, it's individualized.
So, it's so individualized how you respond to that apparent threat and that horse
response to that apparent threat Yep.
Creates one equation.
Yep.
And then with your friend, hope that creates another equation
because of differences in.
Her vagal expression,
Rebecca Bailey: her v well, her ability to, maybe you could say her ability to
access a, a, a dorsal state of calm for a minute to go to immobility without fear.
So that's that thing that I'm beginning to understand even more.
And, and one of the, the things today, there was something written,
I don't wanna say where, but it was by the pros on neuroception
calling it faulty versus Not faulty.
And I was like, I don't believe it's faulty versus not faulty.
I don't think hopes is better than mine.
I just think it's different in combination to that horse.
And so I think our neuroception should be embraced.
And I think that's where the Neurodiverse community has rightfully had some
criticism to polyvagal theory, because it's saying like, the way it's been
perceived, at least from some of the parents I work with of Neurodiverse kids,
is like, you're like saying everybody's ventral vagal, but that's not comfortable.
You know, for me, my home state is sympathetic, period.
Surprise, surprise.
I'm, I'm a really big social engager.
I'm really big on ventral activity, but I personally am the happiest when
I've got a little juice, you know?
but in concert with somebody that I can overwhelm, I have to be careful.
Rupert Isaacson: There's a couple things I want to, to, to return to.
and you, you've, okay, so just for clarity's sake, there are two.
Vagal nerves or There are two main branches of the same nerve,
Rebecca Bailey: two vagal nerves.
There is a left and right vagal nerve.
Do not ask me why they only call it one, but there is.
Okay.
And it comes, starts at the bottom of the brainstem.
Rupert Isaacson: So it goes from your upstairs to your downstairs and
your downstairs to your upstairs.
Rebecca Bailey: Yeah.
The back, the back of the neck, bottom of the brainstem.
But it innervates these important facial nerves and the inner ear.
That's my next
Rupert Isaacson: question.
What does enervate
Rebecca Bailey: mean?
Means it connects in with, connects in with the, the heart connects in,
actually, interestingly enough, it connects it to the nerves that turn your
shoulder too, which is, you know, when you're feeling a whole lot of stress.
Mm-hmm.
And you're like, what is that?
Well, that's also the vagal pathways.
Are you
Rupert Isaacson: saying that innovation means that the, that
nerve, the vagal nerve or both the vagal nerves are, receive, innovate
means it receives information
Rebecca Bailey: from other, or it it connects into and remember to just
that neurons and neurotransmitter, all this stuff is at play too.
It's not just this, you know, not just the nerve itself, it's the
neurotransmitters and the vagal.
The ventral vagal are myelinated.
And what we know about myelination, and please, I'll stumble over my words.
We know that the messages in myelin and the myelin pathways
are quicker, are received quicker than in other parts of the body.
Is
Rupert Isaacson: myelin actually the sheaths of the nerves?
Yeah.
Exactly.
Okay.
So, so the plexi covering over the wires, how good that is, or how not good that is,
Rebecca Bailey: and how quickly it moves.
But in the dorsal area, it's not myelinated.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So you are saying that the ven ventral, vagal nerve is myelinated, meaning
it has, it has some insulation.
Rebecca Bailey: Call it the ventral vagal pathways instead of nerve.
Just remember it's one, because the wander, as you said, it's the
longest of the cranial nerves.
It wanders through all.
So I call it pathways that may not be right, but it helps my little brain.
Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: Just, just, but I'm, I'm helping my little brain here to, ok.
Ok.
We, we've got one, the ventral one, i e, the, the, the safe
place one that's myelinated, meaning it's got a sheet on it.
It's got, it's, it's got some insulation.
Yes.
But the dorsal one, which is connected to our collapsed state, play possum
state are, let's just, appease or go with whatever we need to go
through to get out of the situation.
If we can't fight or flee is raw, it doesn't have an
insulation thing around it.
Would that be correct?
Rebecca Bailey: At least that's my understanding.
Yes.
And that's that rest and digest.
And then the sympathetic doesn't either.
At least that is my understanding at this point in time.
Now, what's fascinating is a conversation I had with Porges couple weeks ago
on one of our barn chats through p v I, we talked to him about how.
Some early research shows, and I don't, I, I gotta clarify this for
you, that predators have less ventral pathways than prey, I believe.
And now don't quote me yet, cause I gotta get that clear and I'll send you
the answer, but it's just interesting.
There is a difference between the ventral pathways between predator
and prey, which makes sense, right?
Because herds have to connect together for safety, which would
make sense that they would need a little bit more of the ventral.
But I'm gonna please, I don't, I
Rupert Isaacson: always do.
Well, this, this raises interesting questions because for example, humans,
we know we're not apex predators.
We're somewhere in the middle.
We're, we're, we're not armored.
We don't have big teeth.
We're not strong like the chimpanzees.
We don't have, some of us have a lot of hair, but yeah, mostly not.
and we're slow, we're bipedal.
So, but we have this big brain, so we get our thing through strategy, which might
make us like half what a herd would need of herb of was, and half what an apex
predator, like a lion or a, or, or, or a tiger, which are, but, but then you
also get these predators that are super social, like wolves, lions versus tigers.
So presumably there must be some sort of a spectrum or continuum.
and I, I presume in evolution, maybe you can, I, I, I, for example, I've
read that humans, this is a really interesting, theory that humans when
they came down from the trees, emulated other midlevel predators that were just
a little bit above them, which is hyenas.
Mm-hmm.
And we began to behave a little bit like them.
And we found that that actually served us quite well because we
couldn't really behave like lions.
We couldn't really behave like tigers cause we didn't have that
kind maximum superpower thing.
I dunno if that's true or not, but what I do know is that wolfs hyenas, and to
some degree lions have a very, have a mammalian caregiving system that's based
an awful lot on affection and interaction.
And that evolves into strategies when they hunt a bit like us.
Yep.
But things like tigers, for example, don't seem to, or polar bears or,
you know, things that are more sort of, so I guess the question then is
if you're dealing to prey, us to a horse, we're the predator of the horse.
The horse is always a little bit skeptical of us, quite rightly.
or if you are a therapist to, or, or person dealing with someone
who's gone through an awful lot of trauma, they have, you know, quite
rightfully a little bit skeptical.
Are we then this is a question, are we then.
Caught in a interesting movable equation constantly between
this dorsal, vagal effect, this parasympathetic nervous system.
Am I safe?
I I not say this, ventral, d vagal thing, saying, if I am safe, can I strategize
with you and make a plan with you and team up with you and align with you?
Or do I need to protect myself and this is an ever-changing landscape?
Is that sort of what we're dealing with?
Really
Rebecca Bailey: cool.
I love the way you are articulated.
I've actually get almost goosebumps cuz I've never really, that's why
the combustion, I've never really heard anyone kind of articulated in
the way that when I stand back, I look at the world and maybe it's that
shamo stuff we did, but Absolutely.
So you're talking about the animals that you're talking, the
mammals that you're talking about that have this social connection.
you're talking about the ability to co-regulate, the ability to
be co-regulate by another, and we get it all screwed up in this.
I think often where we think regulation comes before co-regulation, uhuh
co-regulation comes first, the ability to be soothed by another.
And we absolutely have this bizarre dance with, humans and horses, which is
one of the things with polyvagal equine.
Not to toot our own horn, but really to pay attention to the choice of
the horse within the equation and the protection of the horse as well.
The safety of the horse, the safety of the human and paying attention to this
no matter what we think and how much we think we understand everything that
they're thinking and blah blah blah and all these new theories of what's going on.
The real thing we can do is get in touch with our own nurse Neuroception of am I
being co-regulate and am I co-regulate?
Okay,
Rupert Isaacson: i's need to ask you, let's define these terms.
Cuz again, for a lot of people who are listening, they won't know this.
What is co-regulation?
Just what's the black and white?
So the
Rebecca Bailey: best thing I can say with co-regulation is you think about
the baby that's crying that comes into the world, whether what other
type of animal mammal it is and they need something to take care of them.
They cannot possibly survive in this earth without it.
I always use this story and I hope my son never hears it, but
my son was incredibly colicky and I could not co-regulate that guy.
Like there was no ability to co-regulate.
Rupert Isaacson: The only thing couldn't see him.
Is that what you mean?
You couldn't make him feel better?
Rebecca Bailey: Basically.
I couldn't make him feel better.
Okay.
And the only thing to make him feel better was passing out of of tire because
he had a real serious stomach problem.
And so he didn't necessarily perceive me as this, this.
This, you know, thing to make him feel better where my daughter instantly,
which made me feel like a better parent.
But so what I'm trying to say is that co co-regulation is this ability to
kind of help someone feel better.
And then there's the other side or connect with somebody else where
regulation is, this is insulated piece
Rupert Isaacson: regulations when you're doing it for
Rebecca Bailey: yourself.
Yes, yes.
And that's important and that's what's important about some of
the yoga and all of these things.
But unless we learn to co-regulate, we're not doing what you and I were doing
earlier, which is understanding the social consciousness of, of being aware of each
other's nervous system in the world.
And once you start using that languaging and acting that way in your
life, there's this huge ability to access compassion and curiosity for
other people, including the horses.
Whenever we lose that capacity and curiosity for other people and the
horses, we lose our ability to have them find their own ability to co-regulate.
Right.
And to me it's at the core of therapy for severely traumatized people
is being curious and authentic.
So
Rupert Isaacson: if we have a, an ability to co-regulate Yes.
And we develop.
Is it like a muscle?
We can exercise, can we, can we develop that to a point where our capacity for
empathy, let's say, to put ourselves in the shoes of, without assuming we're in
the shoes of, but at least to try to meet that person or that animal halfway, can
get more and more developed because we're putting more and more attention there.
Would you say that
Rebecca Bailey: that's Well, I, I believe so.
I mean, to me that's what horses taught me.
And, and I think that, as long as we don't automatically assume or leave
them with the responsibility of having to take care of dysregulated people,
I think sometimes that's the thing.
Some of the equine orientations drive me a little bit crazy cuz it's like the poor
horses, like, what am I supposed to do?
Not the, you know, that's amortizing or however you pronounce that word.
But, but I think I, I do believe that you can learn to be co-regulate
and co-regulate and regulate.
And some of us maybe had to take different journeys than other people to get there.
But all of our co-regulation and all of our reg, I I, it's different.
It's individualized.
That's the thing that's so important.
So, You know, in, in the US there's so much on evidence-based protocols,
which is really important, but the fact is it thwarts authenticity.
And so yes, the, it's really important that everybody isn't running around saying
it is because I say, so, it's important that we have some data and understand
it, but at the same time, we gotta understand that our horses, and many of
the people at least that I work with, smell inauthenticity and run to the hills
if they, because it's dangerous to them.
It's not safe.
Rupert Isaacson: Can you define what you would say is authenticity?
Rebecca Bailey: I think authenticity is being really true to who you are.
For example, I'm a big playful person and I use a sense of humor
and it's very natural to me.
And if I had to sit here like this and say, well, Rupert, let's
talk about, you'd be like, what?
Like you might think you, you, part of your cerebral mind might
think, wow, she sounds smart.
Probably not you, but, but it wouldn't be authentic and
Rupert Isaacson: wouldn't you don't mean pu joke.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You might be like, please make me feel safe.
Rebecca Bailey: We wouldn't be communicating through our
nervous systems together.
So even over Zoom, it kind of blows my mind.
I get a really sense of who you are, and hopefully you get a sense of who I am.
Mm-hmm.
And so if you come into my office or my arena or whatever, and I'm trying
to act according to the protocol for blah, blah, blah, unless it's
really, really authentic to me.
It's not, it's, it's gonna fall.
That's like horseback riding.
Unless you authentically are riding with your feel and body, you're
always gonna look like you're, you're, you know, I don't know
what a plastic person on a horse,
Rupert Isaacson: this, this, this, this raises a question for me.
Do brains and bo brain and body mapping?
There's so, and again, for, for, for, listeners that might not know what
that means, let's say for example, I'm holding a pen right now because
I'm writing down some questions.
My brain makes this, pen part of my body so that when I put the, tip of
the ballpoint on the, on the paper, I feel it as if it was part of my body.
So therefore I can do it, in, in, in a way that's effective.
Do you feel that authenticity is a sort of way of the brain body mapping
emotion so that the way in which one communicates with another being
could be animal, could be human?
You obviously where animals be, you know what I mean?
Is therefore at its most strategically effective, so would still come
back to survival, but thriving rather than surviving maybe.
Is it something along those lines?
In a way,
Rebecca Bailey: but I, I, I think that your body, your, your
neuroception in your body has, oh,
Rupert Isaacson: what's neuroception?
That's what I meant to ask.
Rebecca Bailey: So neuroception is porges word for, the detection of safety.
He calls it like the TSA agent, are you safe or you not safe?
Rupert Isaacson: Um, so, so not just what are my nerves telling me?
It's specifically, am I safe?
Am I not?
Rebecca Bailey: Am I safe?
Am I not safe?
And to me that I do feel like horses embody that piece,
and present us that a lot.
Like, you know, people talk sometimes.
I've had people send me stuff about the horse's cerebral cortex
being blah, blah, blah size, and therefore they're not as smart.
And I'm like, you're not defining intelligence in
the way you're defining it.
Yeah, I that one crap.
But, so the neuroception, I think the thing is when we're able to match our
neuroception, our internal body response in a way with present moment narratives
in our brain, we're congruent, right?
But so many people are not congruent.
So many people have
Rupert Isaacson: response.
Explain to me what you mean by
Rebecca Bailey: congruent.
And I may be using it wrong for the, the, the, you know, whatever.
I may be using it wrong.
But from my perception, it means they match.
They're together, they meet together so that, you know, I
have, you know, my little chocolate Labrador dog is laying over here.
And let's say someone walked in the room who was, I don't
know, it's a terrible example.
I don't know this thing, but they come in and they see a dog and they're like, dog.
And it's like, okay, there's an incongruence because the dog is
sleeping over here and it's very quiet.
So you're basing on an old narrative that's making you respond in a way
that's based on a past experience,
Rupert Isaacson: not appropriate to the current situation.
Rebecca Bailey: Yes.
Now that's where this whole thing that's tweaking my brain, where
I've started really teaching that neuroception is neither good nor bad.
And now there's this new hearing that I'm hearing, well, it's faulty versus not.
I actually think that's problematic because I think that the thing that
I've found in a lot of the trauma work that I've done with people to let them
know that their body was just right.
They're here in my office or in my arena with the horses and they survived.
Let's celebrate that instead of looking at the faulty verses, not faulty.
And that's at the basis of the article that I wrote with Steven
Porges and JC Dugard and Dr.
Smith on appeasement.
This thing that when you're in a relationship, With an aggressor.
We were trying to get rid of the word Stockholm.
Stockholm syndrome was the word that the media put forth as to how people
fall in love with the perpetrator.
It actually had seven variables, but the one that most people object
to in my mind, that have been in this situation is the love.
It's not love, it's survival.
For most of these people, every once in a while somebody will say, no,
no, no, I actually did, but whatever.
So, so we're not gonna dismiss it.
There's no absolutes.
But, understanding that the appeasement, which is this ability
to be in dorsal absolute fear and then activate the ventral vagal to
stay alive, is really a superpower.
So, for example, Elizabeth Smart, who's another young woman, I didn't work with
her, but she's a good friend who was held captive for 18 months by a crazy person
up in the hills and raped repeatedly.
She said, in talking about this, about this subject that she understood, what
she did was she thought, if I'm super kind, this person might be kind to me.
This person and his sick wife might be kind to me.
And she said it was unconscious.
But now when I look back at it, I realize that I was from deep terror
into this place of I'm gonna be kind.
In the hopes you're kind too.
Did it change the course of her life?
No.
Did they stop raping her?
No.
But she was able to survive and, and actually now is thriving
a beautiful life years later.
Rupert Isaacson: Did it help her to strategize her way out of that
situation in some way or other?
No,
Rebecca Bailey: because for many of the people that I know who've been in those
extreme, there is seriously no way out.
Okay.
There's no way out.
You ha you, you know, you're living so much in the home and
people talk a lot about hope.
That's a whole nother podcast.
But, but, it is more like surviving in the second in, in the moment.
In the minute.
And so that appeasement word I just love because it is this capacity to have
terrible fear in your body and then go up into an engagement and then not get
your, not be wrong about it in treatment.
Not 10 years later be sitting in an office saying, oh my God, I
disassociated and why didn't I fight back?
Right.
That's not the point.
Right.
So I mean, maybe for some people it is, it could be,
Rupert Isaacson: well there's only any point fighting back if there's a chance
that that's going to be successful.
Right?
I mean, anyone I think who's ever been in a, in a situation
where their life is in danger.
I think this happens in all sorts of situations.
And, for example, in the world of young men, growing up in the type of school
that I grew up with in, in England, it, it was violent and it was constantly,
constantly, constantly violent.
It wasn't just violent a little bit.
It was you, you were beaten by your teachers, you were
beaten by the older boys.
You were, everything was endorsed that way.
And it was a military school and dah, dah, dah da.
And that was not just my experience, that was the experience of many generations.
So this appeasement thing was something that, one, I think you, you touched
on, one really learned to use, which was that you knew what your
chances were if you could fight back.
Well, sure.
But that, and so sometimes you did, but you were made to
feel shame when you didn't.
However, there was a wiser part of you that knew that sometimes you had to
appease cuz this bloke was just 28 times bigger than you and there was no way up.
And then you were either gonna go to hospital and they did, or you
were going to appease in some way.
And then you might then be shamed for that later.
However you survived, went on and could strategize.
And what I'm wondering with that, with, with appeasement and therefore
that this is really interesting that you talk about dorsal i e.
Effectively a bit of a, almost what a collapsed state.
But then that somehow being able to be parlayed into a ventricle state
almost like you can correct me.
So I'm asking this, I'm not stating this.
Would it be a really interesting, clever way of biology to say, okay, we've evolved
from simply reptilian brain amygdala.
Fight, flight, freeze tells the body to create cortisol act.
Don't think, okay, fine.
If, if, if, if the elephant's exploding out of the bush, that's good.
But if you now see that this is something that's gonna go on for a while and,
and, and this is going to be your life for a bit, this is your situation that
you can maybe bypass that amygdala in that cortisol, which is gonna stop you
from thinking that's its job and somehow get back to your prefrontal cortex
where you can now begin to strategize without the benefit of oxytocin.
So, you know, oxy, with, with Horse boy method, for example, we, we rely
on oxytocin, rhythmic rocking motion of the hips to sort of bypass the amygdala.
But what's inter intriguing to me with what you are saying there, is that
maybe there's a way, is it true that one could find a way to bypass the amygdala
that's not dependent on oxytocin?
Because ob obviously, if you're in under extreme threat,
what oxytocin can you find?
There's gonna be no feel good hormone available to you.
Yet somehow your nervous system can sort of override that default and give
you access to your prefrontal cortex.
So you can make some plan, some reason, some logic and, and, and
emotionally regulate, you know, not overreact, not underreact, feel
your way through the situation.
Is that polyvagal survival sort of at its most functionally extreme?
Or it's
Rebecca Bailey: another way to look at it though.
Another way to look at it, and again, this is the simplistic view, is
that your nervous system takes over because if the brain really clicked
in, it would go into panic state.
Right.
So you're, you're, I mean this is, again, is this, I mean, Sue Carter, Dr.
Porter's wife is the one that, isolated oxytocin and vasopressin
and she'd be really interesting to talk to cuz she could, she'll
take us into the real biology.
But from my perspective, when, and I know this is part of polyvagal theory,
is that when you're in a sort of dorsal activated state, dysregulated
with dorsal or sympathetic, you cannot access the cerebral cortex.
Right.
You can't think of it.
Yeah.
At all.
So I would contend that, and I say this to some of my clients,
that your body and brain.
You know, you're, you're, it is time to tell your brain, I got this in my body.
Or tell your body I got this when the brain's hijacking.
Cuz I don't think the cerebral cortex comes into play.
I think that the horror of the situation where there no is no
escape is obvious and, and your body kind of has to handle it.
I don't know if that makes sense, but is it
Rupert Isaacson: something like, on the most extreme level, let's say people
have watched wildlife documentaries or you might have, you know, been on safari
or you might have seen wolves pulling down a, a deer or something like that.
Yep.
and but the, the obvious one would be like lions pulling down a wallaby
store while dog pulling down a wallaby.
And I've certainly seen that.
And one of the things that one sees is when the animal goes, okay, shit,
actually it's, I'm just fucked now.
Yep.
It's like they enter Ohio State and they go, alright fine.
Fair enough.
And it's almost, and it seems that their, their pain and their panic and all of
that is overridden and they're in complete detachment and they're sort of looking
at what's going on, going, alright.
Right.
Well I guess that's my body, but do what you want.
I'm on my way out.
It's vaguely sort of, and, and you, you, you can see this happening
and certainly people report this.
Is that what's going on in the.
Rebecca Bailey: It is.
And what we talk about is, and this is the vagal break going on,
your heart rate gets really slow.
But what you also does, the vagal break, sorry, the vagal, I hate always
explaining that one because I'm so, like, I'm so, I have a hard time
explaining it with the exception of it's like going down a hill and you
put on the brake to slow your heart rate, slow down or slow the bike down.
That's what, that's what happens in your body.
You can slow it down.
And we talk about a thing called voodoo death where people can
get so scared they can die.
And there's been research, we know now that when cats, one of the reasons
people get so concerned about bringing cats into the veterinarians is some
of them can actually die of fear.
And so now, at least in the US, they give gabapentin.
So your body can react very, very dramatically, into this shutdown stage.
And there's all sorts of other things going on, but that's the right, but,
but what I was gonna say is that years ago, about five years ago, I went and I
saw this guy who'd been held captive by Somalian Pirates and for like many years,
and I wish I had his name or 985 days.
And it was so cool because at the time everybody was talking about hope, hope,
hope and how hope saves you and all this.
And he said, every morning I woke up.
If I started thinking about hope, I got so depressed.
By my circumstance that I would shut down.
So I began to wake up every single morning and just try to
stay focused in that moment.
And I really like, that's, see, that's what I heard from these other people.
See, I think there's a huge difference between being held captive, being
restricted, your body restricted.
I think there's a difference in the trauma, the way your
body interprets trauma.
And I think it's also different with horses.
The horses that are, are, are broke through the old styles.
They're, I mean, my horses, we have a heard of like 14.
They're not all mine, but they're a little feisty, little boogers.
You know, they got their own personalities and you can see it.
Even people that don't know horses can see it with them.
And they have been from very early on, been gentle in the, you know,
it's been, and you know, I, they've just, it's, they're different
and you see them differently.
And I do think there's this huge difference between being like you in
that boarding school, if you had sat there and if your brain had been allowed
to say, Rupert, this is messed up.
You could get killed at any point.
You know, you could go in that hospital if you'd really embrace that.
You could have been really scared and gone into a clo close disassociative shutdown.
But instead, your body said, I got you, dude.
We got this.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: There was a point where I went into a shutdown and I couldn't
get outta bed for about six months.
And Yeah.
But what I think happened with that was that that was my body saying
this is a way to opt out if I, yeah.
I I think it knew that, and so it opted me out for a bit where I could gain
some resilience and then come back.
Makes sense.
Yeah.
And to other people who, who sort of went through that, we, we were a
bit confused at the time of why we all had this experience, but, yeah.
And
Rebecca Bailey: you know, it's funny, when I work with, and I've kind of
over the years worked with, we've all in the field, we all work with very
challenging situations, but I have worked with a bunch of unfortunate
situations where children have been tied to beds and things like that.
And maybe it's the people that come to me, but when I begin to work with them
here, what I see is the celebration of who they are and how they got through that.
Hmm.
And I do believe, not that I am this incredible therapist, I think
what I do right with them is I help them celebrate the resiliency rather
than focus on what wasn't there.
And the horses do that.
The horses are like, Hey, you know, let me, let me nibble at your hair right now.
I don't care what happened to you last week.
Rupert Isaacson: Do, do, do you feel, do you feel that horses
that were broke in the old style are effectively held captive?
It's sort of like they're psychically held captive, and is that where the in the eye.
Rebecca Bailey: Yeah, I do.
And, and I was, you know, I even when I first started writing on this subject,
I had some people from the marine world write to me about whales and all this
stuff, and you know how they're being.
And really it starts messing with your brain.
I mean, it's really hard.
It is really hard.
And yes, I do believe that the horses whose quote unquote will
has been broken, that they go into sort of this dorsal shutdown.
Now, what's interesting, I'm also working with a friend of mine from, Australia.
We're looking at a sound protocol for horses to see if we can help.
That is Porges SSP protocol to see if we can help maybe the horses
shift out of that total shutdown.
But I, I believe the best healing in the entire world is heart to heart.
I really do.
Or maybe it's vagal to vagal, but, you know, I really, really believe that.
And I believe, I have a horse here whose head was tied to her leg and she was
actually one of the horses that came from one of the guys in the Grateful Dead.
And it was, did not happen with them.
It happened before they got her.
And she is the most reactive.
Like you come near her ears go back, and she snaps.
You have to wait and approach her in her space.
And then she's like, She'll do anything for you, but she will
always, she's 36 and looks dynamite.
And her thing is like, do you respect me as you come near me?
That's all she asks.
It's really wild.
And she's taught so many people about boundaries.
I want
Rupert Isaacson: to ask you, I want to go to boundaries actually in a minute.
I want to return to the idea of sympathetic and
parasympathetic nervous system.
there's a lot of confusion here.
I was very confused for quite a long time, like, why would they call it
sympathetic when it doesn't seem very sympathetic and parasympathetic?
Why?
Okay.
Are those two things, let's say sympathetic fear response,
parasympathetic, happy going about my business, serotonin, e oxytocin,
e functional, are they part of the vagus nerve or are they something
separate that interacts with the vagus?
Rebecca Bailey: So to make you feel better when anyone asks these questions,
I go to horror in my, in my system.
I'm like, oh my God, I can't get this right.
I get confused cuz the two words drive me crazy.
What I do know about the parasympathetic, yes, they are part and parasympathetic
is the, rest digest, the shutdown piece.
Sympathetic.
I look at more of the fight flight, the sort of conscious pieces that we have.
But yes, they are part of the vagal.
the vagal pathways are part of that.
I actually prefer to talk about the autonomic nervous system as
a whole because then I don't get stuck in the parasympathetic.
But honestly, when anybody in the audience or something says, Dr.
Bi, could you please explain parasympathetic?
I go, oh my God, I'm back in my boarding school.
Right know, and I'm gonna get yelled at and have to write parasympathetic 15
times on the chalkboard, you know, until
Rupert Isaacson: I get the sensory issue of the chalkboard as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rebecca Bailey: Totally.
The cur and the cursive.
And I can't do cursive cause I'm dyslexic.
So the os go on and on and on, and then they slap your little
hands and like, forget it.
But yes, so it's, it's all part of the autonomic.
Am I giving you a flashback, Rupert?
Are
Rupert Isaacson: you, did you see me holding my head?
Yeah.
the, the, the question though really for me is, It seems that okay.
Yes.
What I'm liking about what you say is that it's not simplistic.
and it's nuanced because we know that that's human life.
So say for example, I've got a thing which I like to do.
I really like to cross country ride.
I always have, and I like to, I grew up fox hunting and it's always been my
greatest love and I've smashed myself up a few times, so I know what can happen.
And when I'm going in at a fence, I'm definitely in fear.
However, overriding that fear is an excitement and a pleasure.
So I'm getting sort of a dopamine with cortisol, with a little bit of oxytocin if
the rhythm is nice of the horse coming in.
And then, oh my God, thank God I survived.
You know, as I hit a, why am I even doing this to myself?
And then I look up a shit and there's the next one coming.
And then of course, at the end of the day, I'm like, I don't
really want to do that again.
Are
Rebecca Bailey: you drag hunting or live hunting
Rupert Isaacson: these days?
I'm drag hunting.
And, and that happened because, oh gosh.
back in 2005 or six, I was bringing a group of Kalahari, Bushman Coan to the
United Nations and the US State Department as part of the work we were doing to help
them gain legal access to their, legal title, to their ancestral land, which
they've been illegally evicted from.
And I.
Had a whole background with this and we found ourselves going,
coast to coast, in America.
we started in Hollywood with artists for amnesty.
Basically just trying to make as much noise as we could.
And then I wanted to stop in the Navajo reservation, the Hopi reservation,
because I wanted them to meet indigenous people who had gotten their land
back and basically could talk about, okay, well here are the problems
that come when you're successful.
And we were camped in Canyon DeChea.
I, you know, dunno if you know where that is, but it's the second
largest natural canyon in, in the US after obviously the Grand Canyon.
But it's, it's, it's in a similar area.
It's on the Navajo reservation in Arizona and it's really, really deep.
And if you go down there, you can only access it in most of the, of
the canyon by foot or horseback.
there's a little bit you can access at the end on by vehicle, but you can't
really get in and there's a very, very traditional life on that valley floor.
and we were down there camping and a and a and a medicine man showed up and
said, oh, I've heard that you guys are here, to help sort of get the land back.
Would you guys like to do a sweat lodge?
And we went, yeah, absolutely.
And we did the sweat lodge praying for the return of the land.
And at the end of that, it's actually 2004.
That's right.
the, the med, Samantha, does anyone else have anything that they want to pray for?
And I said, yes, my son just got diagnosed with autism.
So we did a round of prayers for that.
When we came outta the sweat lodge, he said to me, do you hunt?
And I said, I do, but maybe not in a way that you understand.
He said, that's not important.
He said, I'm just getting it loud and clear from the spirit world that
you have to stop and it's somehow tied up with your son's autism.
And that's all I can tell you.
And I went, oh shit.
Of course, of course.
The thing that I love the most is the thing that I have to give up.
Of course, of course.
That makes perfect sense.
Okay, fuck it.
Right.
Okay, I'll do it.
and at the time I was actually, it was part of my job.
I was, I was paid, it's a great gig to go round for the
equestrian magazines and hunt with different hunts and write them up.
I loved it.
And I used to work with the American Masters of Fox
House Association to do this.
And my great friend Dennis Foi might be listening to this, Hey Dennis.
he was always suspicious of me cause I'm such a hippie.
you know, said, I called him and I told him what had happened.
He said, I always knew you would always become an anti ruper.
I knew you were deep down, you know, just an anti, you'd just
turn on us and you'd betray us.
I'm like, Dennis, it's not that, you know, it's, it's, it's a completely personal
decision, but I can't argue with this.
My gut tells me it's absolutely true.
As I was having this conversation with him, this is in Texas where I used to
live, and it, it's not like England where there's a lot of foxes around.
there's a lot of coyotes.
And coyotes don't tolerate foxes much.
So when you see foxes in Texas, you actually notice, you see
maybe like one a year, two a year.
I'm sitting on my front porch at night and the light is off the front and
this fox just comes walking straight out of the dark, stands in the
porch, flight, looks at me and goes, and I just hold the phone forward.
I said, Dennis, this is what's going on right now while we're having this
conversation, so if you think that this is some kind of hippie bullshit, and he
goes, well, right Ruth, maybe you know.
And anyway, so I love that, that all I do these days is drag hunt.
Yes.
Which is, I I do the simulated type of fox hunt where Yeah.
Yeah.
We're hunting a few.
We don't hunt a live animal anymore.
No.
Rebecca Bailey: Yeah.
We used to, there was a big thing where I grew up in Lincoln, Massachusetts
and the only, I, I went on a few, and the last one I did, this is awful.
And all your listeners are probably like, get half of them have hung up or whatever.
they, it got a farmer's cat.
Ooh, dogs not good.
And that was really, that was sort of like tough.
But I had a mayor, my mayor Locke, who used to the hunt master Quincy
Adams, old, old Boston guy, would actually borrow cuz she loved to
go out so much in the front, man.
She was like, she was so that horse was a wonder horse.
But that is an amazing story.
And we, you and I should swap some stories cuz I got a couple that I'm
not gonna go into now that are like, like where does that come from?
You know, that whole thing of whatever it is.
I pretend that I'm not woowoo all the time and I like, but there's a part
of me that's like, please the fox came
Rupert Isaacson: out and barked.
Yeah, no.
As, as my friend, you know, Warwick Shilla, Warwick.
And for those who listeners who, dunno, Warwick Shilla, go now to Warwick.
Switch off my silly old pocket.
No, don't switch off Rebecca.
But afterwards go to, the Journey on podcast and listen to Warwick Sheller.
Yet he has a, a really good expression.
He says, you can't fight the woo.
Rebecca Bailey: It's, it's, you know, it's, it's actually really, I mean, I was
at a Grateful Dead show years ago, and I was walking down and I grabbed a friend of
mine and I said, watch out was backstage.
I said, oh my gosh, watch out.
It's a turtle.
And she leans down, she goes, what are you talking about?
It's a piece of, it's a piece of tissue.
Like it was a, a paper towel.
So we walk a few more st steps, and I'll be damned there, it was a
turtle that people had stepped on in the, I mean like, like, kinda
like, where did that come from?
So you can't fight the woo, but you also have to understand that there's
a lot of people I need to ground myself because if I get too much
in the woo, I go flying off in my spaceship and nobody would understand
Rupert Isaacson: me.
Right.
But life has a habit of grounding us in the woo, doesn't it?
Yes.
I mean, it's out of the woo rather, you know, from the woo to the poo.
Yeah.
Right.
True.
And that actually brings us back to, to, to what I want was in the middle of asking
you that, this nuanced dance between these different aspects of the vagal and
sympathetic, the autonomic nervous system, as you'd say, but with all these different
bits, hence the word poly, seems, you know, I, I've heard people say, oh, if, if
you're in sympathetic, it's bad if you're in, you know, parasympathetic, it's good.
And I'm thinking, well, when I'm going into that fence, I'm, I'm
dancing in between those things.
In a way that allows me to respond appropriately to the fence.
I have to jump where I'm Yes.
And you do you see, you see what I'm saying?
It, it seems that it's neither bad nor good in that moment.
It's bits of both that allow, give me some tools to get the job done
right in a way that with some vent
Rebecca Bailey: oversight.
And, and it's funny you say, sometimes what I show when I'm trying to explain
vagal v I'll show a really high level jumper, go going into a fence on a
horse and you know, they're together.
They're just really together.
They get to the base and they release.
And then there's this beautiful moment, where they reconnect on the other side.
And that's what I, it is funny you would say the jump, cuz I always think of
that, of how, at least to me, that really explains the dance of the nervous system
and the dance of two nervous systems.
How does that rider give the message to the horse?
It's not about dominance, it's about I'm up here, I'm with you,
I'm connected, and vice versa.
And, and I think that's the nuance.
Rupert Isaacson: So yeah.
So, so, so we don't have to feel, we're getting it right or we're
getting it wrong with which bit of the, of autonomic nervous system
are we in this particular moment.
Rebecca Bailey: I, I don't think so.
I think what it is, is it's what it means to you in your body.
Like what you said, Rupert, you know, you go off to the hunt and you're scared,
but you're excited, but you're not.
So when I used to do horse shows, if I showed up and I was scared to death, I
would do terribly If I showed up and I was excited, I would do really beautifully.
And I, you know, there was like this disconnect between understanding that
my body was feeling the same thing.
I, I go back, look back at it and I'm like, oh, that's, you know, the day that I
crashed over all the Oxfords or whatever.
So I think that, , it's what it means to you and in my dear friend Deb
Dana's words, who is someone that's written a lot on Steven Porges in a
way that people understand is really, befriending your nervous system.
Like making friends with your individual nervous system.
And this good, bad, I mean, yes, it is a lot to be in a dorsal overload all
the time can lead to immune problems, sleep problems, digestion problems.
So, you know, we gotta understand that.
But dorsal activity can also be responsible for, as I said
earlier, a mobility without fear.
To be present without fear, you gotta have some dorsal rest and digest going on.
So that said, we, we have a polyvagal, a carousel.
It shows the horses going round and round and when you're regulated,
they're going around and nobody notices.
When it's dysregulated, it's all like jumpy.
I always say at this in my old age, I would like to be in that cart.
That doesn't go up and down, that just goes smoothly.
But none of us can do that.
That's impossible.
We are all gotta, you know, you gotta have all these different pieces happening else.
You're not alive.
Rupert Isaacson: And I guess that also makes sense if you think of
the hunter-gatherer human context.
If you are, if you're walking in the bush, chances are there's
always something hunting you.
Yeah.
Chances are you are probably hunting something.
Chances are you are also looking for wild foods.
Chances are if you make the wrong decision about those wild foods, you get
the toxic doppelganger and poison your family and that, so you, you are cons
and there's elephants around and you're a bit worried about drought, but, oh
look, the Mong Gogo nuts are doing well.
You know, it, it seems that whatever you're doing in life that, that the
human condition, probably the condition of being alive, no matter what species
you are, is always seems to be about this dance, this constant dance between
fear and respite and happiness and.
Moments of terror, and then that feeling of, oh, I survived it, and that's cool.
And I used my skills and Oh, I wonder what the next thing is gonna be.
And oh, here's a philosophical question and one is it's always a flux, right?
Yeah.
Rebecca Bailey: It is always a flux.
And the thing is, I do believe we have to get way out of our head
way more, because as we know, there's a, a really international
crisis of loneliness in this world.
People feel lonely and isolated.
We've got our faces in our cell phones.
I happen to like my cell phone, but I've gotta remind myself to
leave it behind when I go out for a day sometimes, just because.
But we live in this world where we're so lonely, so in so many areas
because people have lost this ability to connect with each other and to
honor each other's nervous system.
So, you know, you're in the store and the person behind you is being
a complete jerk to the teller or whatever that is, to the cashier.
And you know, your job is to really regulate yourself enough that
maybe you might just co-regulate that guy or girl or woman or they
in front of you, whatever it is.
But, but you also, You have to remember that that can also
impact you as well, right?
You can walk outta the store and get in the car and shout at the dog, right?
And then you're like, wait a second.
It wasn't the dog.
I just, this person was screaming at the teller.
So just understanding the importance, it's in the body.
See, I think that's the thing.
It's in the body first, and then the brain fills in the blanks.
That's what I think.
It's like what?
You know, so they talk, you know, Bessel talks about that trauma lives in the body.
And it took me a really long time I used to say to all, and I still do say this,
sometimes trauma's not what, it's not who you are, it's what happened to you.
Okay?
But then actually, Dr.
Porges and Deb had a conversation one time with me, said, no, no, no.
It lives in your body.
It's living in there.
And I still bel, I understand that and I believe it and I accept it.
But I do think until we reduce shame from people and the sense of some sort
of a self responsibility, which is different than what I just said, but
until we help people move outta shame, people get stuck in a dorsal place
and they get immersed in their story.
Because shame is what holds us down.
We know that.
We absolutely know that.
And I actually don't think horses experience shame.
I know my dog sort of does in a funny way, but I don't think horses do that.
I think they're in the moment so much that they just go, oh, and,
and they're nervous system is so flexible they go onto the next piece.
Do you think,
Rupert Isaacson: do you think that shame is a predator thing?
Rebecca Bailey: You know, it's interesting, it's so cool in some ways.
Is it, or is it a predator's tool to, and but how would that happen
in the, in the animal kingdom?
, well I dunno.
Rupert Isaacson: Might it be, let's say you're a wolf pack.
Yeah.
And one wolf isn't pulling their weight or something like that.
And we know that a wolf pack can actually turn on a pack member and annihilate
them in that sort of a, a situation.
Do you think that shame is a tool that predators you?
And this is just coming to my mind hearing you say, maybe, maybe some
listeners might want to chime in on this.
There might be some zoologists out there.
Yeah.
Do, do we think Yeah.
Is that where it comes from?
Cause as you said, you only said the dog and then it, it went.
Oh yeah.
But you're right.
I think I've never, I don't think horses do feel shame.
I think you're right.
I, I don't think they do.
So why feel shame?
Yeah.
Rebecca Bailey: So if we look from the herd, and I would love if you get feedback
on this, but if you look at it from a herd connection, shame is an isolating thing.
You get cast off from the pack, and as a result, you don't have the
safety that the pack would give you.
They're not gonna survive.
So there may be this, you know, I don't know that the, that the dog is like,
oh my God, I feel so bad this happened.
The dog's nervous system may be saying, oh shit, something's about to happen here.
Right.
You know, I, I don't know.
You know, my grandmother grew up in Hawaii and she used to talk about
the minor birds, how they would be on opposite branches, and she would
watch them, like one bird would be all alone, and the other birds would squash
and squawk and squawk, and sometimes they'd all fly off, and other times
they'd all go and attack this one bird.
Mm-hmm.
And she used to tell me about this thing that she would watch out of her window.
And I always thought about that, like, was this bird being shamed?
You know, what was going on?
It's just, I don't know, you're pulling out all these old, like, thoughts of
mine, Rupert, that I, I have no one to talk to about half this stuff.
So thank you for giving me the opportunity.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, let's explore this line.
So if we, so we are predators, we can, we can accept that.
Yeah.
If, if we are predators and if we use shame as a tool to sort of make
people pull together as a team.
If, if that's, if that's possibly its basic function, yet it can, of course.
Un man, it, it, it can do us in as shame so that if we are shamed, we can also
be made dysfunctional within the team.
What do we do about shame?
How, how, how do we, how, how do we, how do we dance out of dysfunction with that?
what are your thoughts?
Rebecca Bailey: Problem is, is it's been used to, shame has been used to disempower
marginalized populations, right?
And so there's a certain investment in using shame in certain cultures
and certain, certain, groups.
Absolutely.
But what we can do clinically, what we can do with the horses is
really try to talk about the innate brilliance of the nervous system, the
innate, absolute innate brilliance.
And by understanding that, and that's why I was so concerned about the word
faulty neuroception, because to me, helping people completely understand that
this is the response in all its glory.
Maybe it could be different in another context, but in that moment it's
what you, it was the best you got.
And that's okay.
And then how do you maybe let yourself learn to receive
cues of safety going forward?
But it's so interesting because shame has been written about forever
going back to psychoanalytic work.
It's, it's so much more toxic than, than blame, I and guilt.
And I really believe that it is at the core of many of our mass shooters,
that there's this shame in casting out of the herd that propels them
to want to act in such a way that says, don't you ever forget me.
Don't you ever, you know, don't you forget who I am?
And it's really sad.
I mean, God, that's a whole nother tangent, but it's just so sad to me.
When you look at, I've had the, occasion of reading some of the profiles
of mass shooters, and frequently they're marginalized people that have
been pushed outta their community.
I am not in any way justifying the action, but is there's this shame piece that
you belong over here and we're here.
And the acting out is like, don't you forget me.
Don't you not know that I'm here.
Don't you forget that I was here.
Sorry about another tangent there.
Rupert Isaacson: Right?
Or, or, yes.
Or, or if you're gonna throw me out to the greater predators, then I
will become that greater predator.
Yes.
Yep.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is that, is that, is that what vengeance is?
Is that what Avengers, that's interesting.
Rebecca Bailey: So this is what you and I need to get together and write
a book on and talk about is the power of shame and the predatory practice.
Because if we can attack that darn s word again, if people can hear about
it and really understand it from a body-based response, maybe we can get
it out of this cerebral value judgment.
You know it, because it isn't a moralistic thing.
It's, it's a survival thing to want to feel connected and it is so powerful.
You never put a horse alone.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: Hopefully, do it all the time.
But I'm just, I'm just thinking about back to my time, for example, with the Bushman.
I never heard of anybody being or encountered this, whether re real, you
know, in real time or hearing about it.
I never heard of anybody being shamed, ostracized.
I, I, I never, no one to my knowledge has, was ever cast out.
And if, if these people again feel collective responsibility and, and,
and if these people are the oldest people on the planet, therefore the
blueprint for what humans actually are, That's actually very functional.
That always used to give me a lot of hope.
And I think being, oh, actually maybe we're actually really
quite good as a species because these people seem so functional.
yet we know for sure other cultures do.
I wonder if do, do you think that in the wild context of
humanity, blame might be used?
And I, I'm asking myself this question, like, let's say, I don't know, you didn't
pull your weight somehow in the thing and it compromised the other people
and they're a bit mad at and da da da.
You know, because you jeopardize everybody's safety in that moment.
So you got a chance to kind of then go to the shaman and you go, okay,
what do I need to do to access my mojo to, you know, but other cultures for
sure later, cultures, agricultural cultures, that sort of thing, we
know absolutely have cast people out.
you hear about, you know, the accounts of the a hundred years war and, you
know, people caught between two armies trying to get into the city with the
attacking army behind them and the army behind the war and just being
allowed to let die, you know, in between and starve to death in between.
And, and what would make you not open the gates?
What would make you make that decision?
And that seems to be a.
A, perhaps a non-authentic way of being a human is that the difference between blame
and shame is shame a later construct.
Rebecca Bailey: I think it probably is a later construct, and probably if
we're really going deep, brought in through paternalistic governmental,
I, I don't know that any of the maternalistic, if that's the right word,
societies would use shame like that.
And so it's, for lack of a better word, it's, it's, it's, I don't know.
It's really interesting.
It serves to disempower people, period.
And wherever.
Yeah, go ahead.
Well,
Rupert Isaacson: the question is shame a recent thing.
I mean, in terms of human history, let's think about it.
Ev, evolution, history rather than like, history, you
Rebecca Bailey: know, since I would think so, wouldn't you?
I mean, I would be, it would be so interesting to, again, if you have any
listener who's like a sociologist that can say, actually we can see guilt as
being, you know, brought in X, Y, Z.
But I bet, I bet that is a more function.
I bet it's a function.
I don't know.
That's very interesting.
I I still blame it on the men.
Sorry.
Rupert Isaacson: No, I mean, it may well be because I mean, with, with, with,
agriculture, I mean, agriculture can be.
That's when we see war coming in and that sort of thing.
it can be maternal, it can be paternal.
We see both, but usually it's the blokes, usually it's,
Rebecca Bailey: and, and of course without offending people, and maybe I
do, but I don't mean to that they, you know, very much Christian values are
embedded in, in, in guilt and shame.
Rupert Isaacson: I mean, well, is guilt the same thing?
This is another, is guilt the same
Rebecca Bailey: thing as Sean?
No, I don't think guilt is, see, in my humble opinion, guilt is
a motivator for some people.
And, and, as long as it doesn't go into probably the dorsal, if we're
using polyvagal terms, which I love to use because who knows if this is really
true, but it sounds so smart that maybe, maybe shame is a dorsal response, a
fear response, a deep fear of being cast out where guilt has maybe, let's
think, possibly some sympathetic juice into it that there's something I can do
about this, to, to make it different.
Where shame, I don't think there's the, the structure, the construct is not, I
can do something to make it different.
It's like I've done something terrible and there's no rectifying Right.
There's
Rupert Isaacson: no redemption.
Rebecca Bailey: Right, right.
Whereas the, the, the guilt one I do, I really, I do sometimes have people
come in and say, I feel so guilty.
And it's like, okay, well you feel really guilty.
what do we do with that now?
Where do you want that to go?
I mean, yeah, it's okay to be feel guilty that, you know, You yelled at your kid
or your husband, or your wife, or your spouse or whoever, that's, that's fine.
But what are you gonna do with it?
Can you move it into a ventral, into a place where there's compassion and
curiosity for yourself and for them?
Or are you gonna let it go down into an embedded place of, you
know, shame that I am a terrible person, is ventral forgiveness?
I think so, for sure.
I have found my life to be so much richer when I look at, see, I look at compassion
and curiosity as, so when I'm dealing with someone, whether in the horse arena or
wherever, clinically or not, who are so politically different than I am, initially
my sympathetic gets bubbling and I, you know, like, and then I just have to really
go to curiosity and I can literally feel the shift in my body and I can feel the
shift of like, for a second, you know, it doesn't mean that I walk away saying, oh,
isn't that wonderful I, I'm there, right?
It's just I go to more compassion for myself, for my response and for them.
And so that sort of goes to forgiveness.
I have a funny relationship with forgiveness.
I.
I go back, I, I am a teeter-totter on forgiveness.
Sometimes I, I, I don't choose to be in sympathetic with forgiveness, and I don't
choose to be in dorsal, but I choose to be okay that there are some people I just,
you know, I, I don't want to forgive.
And that's a conscious choice.
That's a cerebral choice, right?
Right.
And it's not very choice.
But there's only two or three people in my life that I'm like that with.
Rupert Isaacson: And I suppose in one's perfect world, one would,
one would get to that point.
And who knows, maybe one will.
But I think yes, everyone can say that.
may, maybe not today, but hopefully tomorrow.
Yeah.
I was, this is one of the questions I had written down here actually, which is how
can we access kindness and compassion?
Well, you know, even when, just let me just, but even when our sympathetic
nervous system is active, meaning, righteous anger, let's say you're
having trouble forgiving some somebody because they actually did do you wrong.
And, so therefore you have every, every reason, every right to not forgive
them, to be, to be angry with them.
yet one knows deep down that if I better a grudge, It doesn't do oneself
any good really at the end of the day, but it can be very, very difficult
to not act upon that, et cetera.
How so?
How do we access kindness and compassion even when our sympathetic
nervous system is active like that?
What, what, what, what?
when we survive trauma, what, what, what, what are your thoughts on that?
Rebecca Bailey: So, two pieces.
I think that the, an, the simple answer is to get back into a regulated
state, and that's where like being with the horse and grooming the horse or
watching the horses or just being in the presence of, you know, peaceful horses
and some ways can help you regulate.
But what I was.
Interrupting you about, sort of dovetails to what you also just said,
which the people, I don't forgive.
I want them to be shamed.
So, you know, miss, miss, Dr.
Lio over here saying that, you know, when I, when I look at the people in my
life that, and there's two that I really believe, I don't wanna ever forgive.
I, I don't walk around with a lot of hatred for them, but they have never
showed any shame for their action.
And it pisses me off.
So I think the one way that we get at, into compassion is to stay curious and
to say regulated and get outta judgment.
Because when we judge, we cannot be compassionate.
We just can't be.
So, I can't be compassionate for these people because I'm judging their action,
which is not fair to them really.
But so what?
Sorry.
But, but so I, I think the real answer is to just really stay at a
judgment and do everything we can.
And I think, you know, there's certain, so social morays that I will always
judge and have issues about, like, people that hurt little children, period.
Sorry, you know, don't work with them, don't wanna work with them.
Doesn't mean they don't deserve compassion from some, it's just not, I don't
have an in me to do it, but I think it's staying curious and compassion in
accessing these ventral, vagal pathways.
Rupert Isaacson: And so can, so let's go back to horses.
we talk about co-regulation.
So if we can be in the, If we can cohere with a nervous system that
is regulated so we can be around a horse that's calm, for example.
can something as simple as that in a, in an environment with no bad
sensory triggers or nothing where we feel a threat, can those two
things help us just simply to get into that curiosity, compassion,
ventral strategizing, social thing.
Something as simple as I'm, I'm going out into a nice environment.
The people around me are, okay, this horse is cool and it's now regulating me.
Rebecca Bailey: I, I really believe that.
I also think practicing breathing in a way that's, you know, not complex, sort of a
shorter breath in, longer out, being aware of being really present in the moment.
Smell, especially horses, although some people say they don't like the smell, but
smelling the barn and feeling like the tactile just feeling, I, I don't believe
it's just horses that help the shift.
I think it's all of it.
Having somebody there with you who makes you feel safe or, you know,
or if they're your horses, you know, and you feel comfortable.
But yes, I believe that that shift can help your body.
Recognize it as a healthy homeostasis, but you have to remember to carry
it with you out of the situation.
You know, you're driving down the road and somebody cuts you off and
you're like, get the blank out of the way and you're, you nerve up.
Well, I'll even tell you a better example.
So I would had to get two crowns the other day and it really hurt in my
mouth and I was like, really hurting.
The Novocaine wasn't working or whatever they give you now.
And I suddenly really started riding my horse on my head, not on my head,
riding my horse on top of a hill that I loved to let him walk up to at
his own accord with the loose rain.
And he stands there and we look out over the valley and then when
he is ready to move, he moves.
And so I put myself in that place and I just completely enveloped and tried
to remember the smell and just being on his back and it felt so much better.
It felt, and I shifted.
I shifted internally.
Rupert Isaacson: Were you in your ventral vagal or were you in your dorsal.
Well used
Rebecca Bailey: to, I was sympathetic.
I wanted to get the heck out of there.
I wanted to run like hell.
And then I started getting a little bit like in my head, like, this
dentist doesn't know what he's doing.
Why is it not going out?
Later he explained to me about this particular tooth and why the nerve is hard
to, to innerate to put the medicine in.
But so I went into this cerebral thing, like, this guy
doesn't know what he's doing.
I gotta get outta here.
And then I went to, oh my God, just, just sit here and be in it.
It hurts.
It hurts, it hurts.
And just sort of a dal.
And then I went, wait a second.
What is the grounding piece in me?
So that goes back to your question.
If you allow yourself to look for like what Deb called, Deb Dana calls the
glimmers, the beautiful things, the things that bring us back into our
body, this oxytocin and vasopressin and somehow is released in our
body, we can help our body restore.
Now the problem is there are people that live in situations
that are so dire, right?
So dire.
How do they do that?
But the thing is they do, they find those moments of grounding.
And you know, I talked to somebody who just came out of Ukraine who was
talking the experience about being in the middle of this village or this
town that was being bombed and just this thing that they held onto was the
vision of it was the also a hillside.
And that was the thing that brought them back in their body
when they were out of the fear.
So I think we can.
Rupert Isaacson: But, so talk us through when you're doing that, whether it's in
the dentist or they're in Ukraine, what's going on in the vagal pathways and system?
What's the dance between sympathetic, parasympathetic, and so forth?
Rebecca Bailey: So what I think, what I think and what, you know, I guess the
research shows is that what would many things are happening, neurotransmitters,
all of these pieces are happening.
But if we go to the simple nervous system piece, the ventral vagal
again, is overseeing everything going on up here, kind of helping
you be present in some level.
You're, you know, whatever, that's taking you the wrong way.
But you're either going into the deep fear where the digestion
rest and digest is going offline.
Your stomach starts hurting, it doesn't feel good to sit still.
You start no noticing stomach problems or you're sympathetic anxiety.
You feel anxious, you wanna get out of there, you wanna fight.
So that's also even something to think about when you're in an
argument with a partner or a friend.
Like if you can look at it like, my sympathetic is being activated right
now, and by the way, I use activated not triggered because there's been
so many mass shootings that the word triggered activates people in itself.
So you're activated, you're in an argument instead of getting into.
Up into your brain about it.
You go to a part that says, I am just feeling fight or flight right now.
I can't problem solve until I walk away and come back.
Or the same thing, your stomach hurts so much or you can't
sleep in all of these things.
When we notice our stomach problems, when we notice digestion, when we notice all
these things, it means that something is very much outta balance in our system.
Our system needs good ventral, vagal oversight, but also all these
other pieces to function well.
Rupert Isaacson: Is there a shamanic ability within the vagal system?
Rebecca Bailey: Tell me, tell me more what you mean.
Rupert Isaacson: what I mean is almost like a metaphysical above, above the
physical, ability within the relationship between these different parts of the
vagal response to say, okay, things are really, really shit right now,
or whatever is going on right now.
I'm thinking about alter sets of consciousness too.
I need now an alter set of consciousness and therefore there's a, is is there
a wisdom in the bo Is that what shape shifting is basically, is there
Rebecca Bailey: is that, go ahead.
No, I'm jo, I'm nodding my head cuz yes, I really believe so when people.
Yes, I really think so.
I think that there is this, like, whether it's magical, mystical, woo,
whatever it is, there's this way that your body, your nerve autonomic nervous
system says, I gotta take over here.
I gotta do this right now.
And if your brain is arguing with it, it is just, it's so,
such a simple way to look at it.
But I just, you have, you give into whatever this thing and this mystical
part of your body is and kind of let it guide you in the moment for survival.
So when I have, you know, I was working with somebody the other
day who had God years of sexual and abuse and trafficked as a child.
And they've given, been given this message that they never fought back
and they, this happened to them because they were the most likely to
have, they just had this narrative that was really kind of sad to shame.
And what I'm trying to help them see is that you survived your nervous system,
knew that there was nothing you could do, like the boarding school with these crazy
people that were trafficking them to your parents and your parents' best friends.
Nothing you could do.
And it was very interesting because then they were talking about some of the,
restrictions that they went through.
And I've heard this from so many.
Right now, mostly women, some men where, you know, they'd have bags put over
their heads, and this is an activator or alert, you know, situations happen
where their breath was restricted while they were being sexually assaulted.
And what their body did was just go into this fear shutdown.
Their brain said, I can't deal with this.
That's what I think.
I, I can't, if I sit here, I'm gonna die of fear.
I've just gotta check out.
And to me, I think that's like a superpower.
I don't know.
I have always said to people, and I've been told before I worked with these
people, I probably would've fought like a cat and gotten myself killed.
But what, anytime I've said that, everybody says, you don't
know until it happens to you.
You just don't know.
And may it never happen to me like that.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
It might be, it might be context specific.
So maybe the same person, let's say for example, you're a warrior,
male or female, and you access an altered set of consciousness
where you, you can preserve, yep.
Rip off all your clothes, run into the blades, they'll bounce off you because
you are in that metaphysical state.
At that point, then perhaps you get failed because it wears off.
That super adrenaline thing, you get taken prisoner and then a whole
other set of responses kick in.
But are they actually the same response?
Is it.
The one is, is, is, is, appropriate to fight.
So that's what you use at that particular one, and the other one
is appropriate to appeasement.
So you use that one at that time.
And if you could dance between those two, presumably you
might survive that campaign.
Yep.
Take that wisdom home with you and use it for the general, wisdom of the community.
Say, well, yes, I, I, I was both a fighter and an appa.
It's all about the context.
One could imagine surely that it's not just purely personality driven,
it must also be context driven, right?
Rebecca Bailey: Context driven and maybe temperament in some levels, or,
you know, the, the, if you are highly prone to being super reactive, maybe
it's harder or highly prone to, high sensei to sounds and all of that.
Your ability to regulate under that term, under those conditions might be harder.
You know, I, I think it, it's, it's all it is.
It's dependent on context, dependent on temperament,
maybe dependent on opportunity.
When I first started this crazy, like thinking about all this stuff, I was
really into the learned helplessness model, and that was in their early
nineties, that Martin Seligman, who discredited himself by being part of the,
Committee that helped with Guantanamo Bay for, which was like amazing and really sad
because he's also the daddy of optimism.
Very interesting.
So early on I was into his theory of learned helplessness where
dogs give up when in a maze and they just lay down and give up.
And that was how I would explain many of these people that I was working with.
This would be like 80, early nineties until I started really talking to
them and I'd be like, wait a second.
You were no, no way.
You were helpless, right?
This, you were as far from helpless as anybody I've ever heard.
You were in a helpless situation, but you prevailed through your
ability to manage it in your body.
And so that's kind of sort of really shifting things for me.
And I think horses, I mean, I think horses are, I do think horses, and this
is another hole, but I just, I think horses in some ways are appeasers too
because, you know, and I do, I actually, I love to ride and I love my horses.
I love being around them on the ground next to them, watching them, whatever.
I actually have a couple that really do like to be ridden.
They really do.
I mean, it's no question.
They're, you know, they, but I still think there's an appeasement
piece that happens with them.
You know, that they're in a situation that there's really no,
there's really no escape from it.
But if you ride beautifully, incorrectly and try not to yank on their mouth and
hit them in the sides and all these things that we humans sometimes will do,
then there can be a mutual connection.
But it takes a lot of work.
Rupert Isaacson: But isn't that the same as every, every relationship?
I mean, I'm just thinking about, you know, one's relationships in
a marriage or one's relationships as child to parent or whatever.
Appeasement is part of the puzzle every, every day.
It's like there's, there's always compromises being
made and you let that one go.
And the more you let go, actually the smoother things go.
Even if you're, it's not fair, but okay.
Right, right.
It's not that important, but one could argue that that's appeasement.
Right?
I mean, I, I remember hearing people talking about masking as if it's a
bad thing and thinking, well, hold on.
That's a survival skill, right?
I mean, if you, if you were hunting a deer and you put on the garb of the deer
with the atlas that's masking so that you can mask yourself as the deer or a
masked ball where you take on it or, or, or role play or that's, that's, again,
shamanic or, you know, shape shifting.
Surely these things aren't all positive or all negative.
Aren't aren't, aren't they, aren't they simply the dance that we do?
Yeah.
Through human relationship to and, and inter species relationship,
I guess, to try to get the best outcome in a given moment.
I mean,
Rebecca Bailey: yeah, I think so.
I don't, the one that I have issue with is fawning because in the
animal kingdom when an animal fawns at a predator, they get killed.
And so fawning has sort of taken legs as a word that I really, I, I bristle at.
It's come outta my mouth.
I know it has, but I bristled because it really is a, it's also number one,
it's a conscious thought where I don't think appeasement is a conscious thought.
And number two, it can.
Serve to agitate an aggressor.
And number three, if we start using it too much, I hate to think in our
courtrooms when the defense attorney says, but didn't you fawn, if we start
giving it air, it really, it concerns me cuz I think, I think right now it's
a very hip word to use and I'm always getting myself in trouble by saying,
look, can we come up with a better word?
Because, veterans in, you know, prisoner of wars didn't fawn over
their aggressors and we would never say that, but it's interesting.
Anyways, Rupert, I, it,
Rupert Isaacson: it's, well, it's interesting the word fawn because, we
talk, you know, foreign, what is it?
A baby deer, right?
Right.
And, a baby deer.
What does a baby deer do?
It lies down.
Yep.
And it hopes that, finds it right.
That's all it does.
It doesn't approach a predator and go, Hey, do you want a beer?
You know?
Right.
So why do we use that word?
Rebecca Bailey: Well, it's become, it became recently in sort of the
trauma community, and I've had some legitimate, discussions where some
people have said, look, in my society as a woman, that's the only power
I'm allowed is toan over the man.
And, and there's some credence.
But how it's different than appeasement is, it's a conscious play I see.
And where appeasement is unconscious, it's this unconscious process
you can't conc consciously.
And I think about that and I think, is that really true?
Will, is it all black and white?
No.
my gosh.
I, I, I, I just, the word is so offensive to my nervous system.
My new thing is how does that feel on my nervous system when I say a word?
And just because I feel it doesn't mean you're not gonna have a hundred people
sending you notes saying, you know, I love that word, blah, blah, blah.
Okay.
You know, that's, that's okay too.
It's just a word that I have.
As much as Stockholm Syndrome really disturbed me, I get
afraid that that's gonna be memorialized in the literature and.
I just, I don't wanna go backwards in the way we help people understand
their systems and the way that we, you know, I wanna go forward, which
I think we have an opportunity too.
People like you out there, people like all these other great people talking
about horses is having their own nervous system and all these things, like,
we're moving in the right direction.
Let's just not fall back with words like fawning.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
And in my diet.
Well, right.
No, that, and that brings me to the next, the question, which is the future.
what's your vision for the Equine Polyvagal Institute?
What, what do you want to achieve with this?
In a perfect world,
Rebecca Bailey: we are really looking for and hoping to have people taking
the courses and understanding it and taking it into their community
and creating their programs.
So we have things like polyvagal ponies that we work with where it's an eight
session, I hate to say about protocol designed to help people work with their
nervous system before they have to testify in court or things like that.
Oh.
So it's not a therapeutic.
So there's all these different things, programs that we're developing
in the hopes that people bring 'em into their community to help
people with their nervous system and regulate their nervous system.
We're also developing videos that people can use in their offices, in areas
where they can't have access to a horse.
To sort of help them learn some of the lessons we all
have by being with the horses.
So we're just hoping we grow, we're hoping we teach people to play and have fun.
what doesn't maybe come through for me today is I am a big goof, and
maybe it did, but I like to laugh.
I like to play.
I love humor.
And, just hoping to maybe shine a different perspective on self-awareness
and therapeutic interventions.
So it's, it's a very love.
If someone, if someone
Rupert Isaacson: was, working in the field of equine assisted interventions,
and obviously many of the people listening are, what do you feel is
the best value that they could get from interaction with the Equine
Polyvagal Institute in whatever way?
What, what, what, what's, I think we
Rebecca Bailey: go on our website and check it out and, you know,
there's so many new people out there.
I got involved with this stuff, as I said in the early nineties.
Polyvagal didn't come to fruition until about 2012.
just the concept.
Check into, go to the Polyvagal Equine Institute, see what we're
doing, see if it resonates.
Find your herd with, within this wonderful field of equine therapy or whatever
we're gonna call it, it's building.
Find your people.
And within that, so if you come to us and you're like, I really like this.
I wanna take the fundamentals class, this is really cool.
I wanna go do one of the trainings.
Do it.
I'm doing a training over in, somewhere in Belgium and in France doing Arizona,
hopefully Costa Rica, California.
So we're taking it to different places.
Check it out, see what you think.
Maybe you don't like it.
Maybe you're, you know, into arches or somebody else.
we're only interested in people coming that really wanna learn, learn, just
learn from our perspective right now and bring their perspective.
You know, sometimes you have people that wander in and they're just in
a different mindset and don't come.
If it doesn't resonate, that sounds really terrible.
But, you know, I, I am who I am.
I'm 62 years old and I'm only more me than I've ever been.
And I continue to be more me than ever before.
And so, yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: but let's, that's me.
Okay.
I'm doing horse boy stuff, so I'm, I'm working with the vagal nerve,
you know, so I'm trying to induce oxytocin, stradling up the vagal nerve.
It's touching every organ we're getting, hopefully we're, you know,
telling the amygdala, Hey, you don't need to create that cortisol.
Let's get that prefrontal cortex, go and get it.
So I'm saying, well, hey, look, I'm, I'm working here with the
vagal nerve, but, but what can I, how can I improve my practice?
How can I, what can I learn?
What can I,
Rebecca Bailey: I want you to come to our five day in August when you come to
Sonoma, California and you come visit your dear friend over at Square Pegs.
We have a five day that you're
Rupert Isaacson: Joel Dunlap.
By the way, that is everybody.
If you haven't listened to her podcast, she's amazing.
Gotta listen to Joel Dun that he's the best people on the planet.
Well, yes.
What would I, what would me and Joel do if we came to you to, you would,
Rebecca Bailey: you would come to our, our five day, the three days at
level one and then level two, and you would learn about how we work with the
polyvagal, principles with the horses.
And it's on the ground.
You join a group of people that are somewhat like-minded, who really wanna
understand how to incorporate another level of their own self-awareness
and connection to the work.
You could also go online and watch our fundamentals class, and understand a
little bit more of the fundamentals.
But honestly, the best thing to do is come and participate in the class.
And what we really wanna do, if you're really asking, is have some
satellite programs that are doing it.
And very much kind of like what you've done with your horse boy
is people that really understand.
It's very interesting though, Rupert, that you and I.
Again, have run in the same herds without meeting people.
And people that mean the most in my life, like joy from Red Barn and new
friend of mine, Joelle, are very dear friends of yours and very dear friends
of mine, which tells me we're all in the same sphere in a lot of ways.
So I challenge you come for five days with us.
We
Rupert Isaacson: invite, I, I'd love to, I guess what I'm driving at, and I,
I'm sure I'll actually is, is what do you think, I or someone else in my shoes
could take away to their practice that okay, we get to your five days we go away.
Right?
Right.
What, what, what, what?
How do we improve our practice
Rebecca Bailey: with this?
You get outta your head, you get outta your head, you get
outta the amygdala stuff.
You get out of all of that.
And even you have done that a little bit because that's your orientation, right?
Just like if I come to one of your things, I'm going to get something different.
Mm-hmm.
But you're gonna really get outta your head back into your body in a way that
you probably have naturally been doing all these years anyways, and beginning to
understand that piece and the nuance of the interaction of the nervous systems.
And you're gonna be stopped from going back up into the
medella and all of that piece.
You're gonna be encouraged to go back into this piece and sort of re.
Reposition your perspective, and you may walk away saying, I got it, I got it.
I already knew all this.
That Then we have a home run because we want you to be
imperative of who you already are.
Rupert Isaacson: I think, I think you, you answered my question with that,
phrase, understand the nuances, the interactions of the nervous systems.
Yeah.
That, that, that's for me, that piece of the puzzle.
So when, when I'm going around, for example, like you, I'm, I'm,
I'm doing trainings and workshops in different places, and people
come and we say, look, we're not telling you to do anything different.
In fact, we know that you're doing an amazing job wherever you are.
Here are simply a series of a set of tools.
which if you add them to your already awesome thing,
simply, develops it further.
That's all.
But we, we know that if you never interacted with us at
all, you'd go on being awesome.
It's just Right.
I love that.
Real curious.
But what I, what I love about what you just said, that is, and that
would be the tempting thing for me, is like, Ooh, actually, yeah.
Cuz I, I do work with the nervous system.
I'm deeply interested in the nervous system, so anyone who can shine some
light for me on further nuances.
I mean, because that for me is a, is a series of tools that I know I'm
gonna be able to use effectively.
Not just with the, the clients that I'm working with, but also
with myself, like as a user manual.
Also my, my interactions with my own horses in my sport horse and dressage
life, not just in my equine assisted life, nuances of the interaction
to the different nervous systems.
I can't imagine that any of us could not benefit from that.
Right.
Rebecca Bailey: I, and I love when people come and we learn too, and we
get a lot of feedback, which I'm very proud of where people say, this is
one of the very few places that I feel like I can bring my expertise too.
And, and you know what I, I mean, to me that's like so important.
Yeah.
And yes, we do have a personal and professional awareness,
one that we're also doing a two days, which is really fun.
People that maybe don't ever wanna do equine work, they just
wanna learn more about themselves.
So, the most exciting thing though is that I'm connecting with amazing,
incredible people that I've always meant to connect with, but never did before.
And I'm so honored you had me on this
Rupert Isaacson: podcast.
It's a no-brainer.
I mean, I, I heard about what you're doing.
It's like, well, obviously everyone needs to know about this.
I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's advancing the field.
, some questions, you mentioned a couple of people that I think
people will be curious about.
You mentioned Deb Dana.
Can you tell us a little bit about Deb Dana and where people could
find out about her and what insights
she
Rebecca Bailey: can give?
So Deb Dana is amazing in that she is a very close friend of Dr.
Porges and she sort of takes Porges work and makes it more, understanding to lots
of people and all you have to do, yeah, all you have to do is put in Deb Day and
Ann, you'll see all, all over the place.
I do notice, do know that they are going to be in, London at some master
series in, the end of August and Porges will be there with Deb and they're
just really wonderful to listen to.
I think Bessel will be there, Steven Levine.
So they're all, some of these guys are part of the old school that
have brought so much to the field and Deb is very refreshing in that
she has just a different style.
She does very office-based work, but very similar to something we do is like,
do you want me to stand here or here?
Where is it the most comfortable in your nervous system?
She does that work in her office.
So she has a book called Anchored.
She has a, she just has amazing resources, so just put her in and
you'll get more information than.
Rupert Isaacson: So anchored some someone's driving around and
they might want to listen to an audiobook anchored by Deb Dana, you
Rebecca Bailey: mentioned it's good if her voice is so soothing though.
She can also put you to, I mean, I, I've listened to her on planes and
her voice is very much like this and so I'm not sure I drive around.
I might sit and listen,
Rupert Isaacson: so, so don't operate heavy machinery.
Okay.
you mentioned another but Power of the Herd,
Rebecca Bailey: that's Linda Kahani and Linda Kahan is a good friend of mine
and Des opponent Quest International.
She and I met and worked together many years ago.
We started something called Connection Focus Therapy, which is has grains
of polyvagal very much in it.
And she wrote a really neat book called The Power of the Herd.
She's written, she also wrote the Dow of Equus and all sorts
of books that people know.
the power of the herd.
I actually happen to like, because we use it with a polyvagal twist of like
looking at leadership characteristics.
So it's another one Power of the Herd's.
Really good.
five roles of the master herd.
She's written a lot of great stuff and she's, she's really interesting.
Rupert Isaacson: This, this brings me to another thing which you said right at the
beginning of of, of this conversation, you talked about, study that had been
done, with women who were used to working with horses and other animals and it
gave them that somehow measurably.
This, leadership quality.
Yep.
Would you say that what you guys are doing at Equine Polyvagal
Institute might help people access that kind of leadership quality?
I
Rebecca Bailey: think so.
You know, I think about, I have a horse now and I've ridden my whole life.
I'm not, I'm an accomplished rider, but not a horse.
Professional horses kind of spit tobacco at me and say,
prove it before they listen.
But I've had all sorts of wonderful dressage horses, et cetera.
And I recently got a horse about two years ago who was a recovered
bucking horse, believe it or not.
Okay.
And I fell in love with his look and just fell in love with him.
And if you ask him for the first year, Rupert, we could only go forward
two or three steps before he'd buck.
Okay.
And everybody was like, he's got, you know, health problems.
And the vet would say no in NF health problems, it's taken me two years.
He's the horse that I now think of when I ride up on the hill.
I had to learn to completely shift my mindset to the power of connection.
And so when I ride him, the only thing I'm allowed to do is think 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2.
I have to be a hundred percent with him, a hundred percent with him.
And he would take me to the moon if he could.
Period
Rupert Isaacson: is the power of connection, courage.
Rebecca Bailey: I think it's, no, I think it's, curiosity.
I had to spend, I had to spend a whole year trying to be curious
about what would help this guy get out of his activated state.
How
Rupert Isaacson: did you, how did you override your parasympathetic
fear of being bucked off?
Rebecca Bailey: Oh, I just had to keep reminding myself that I
wasn't about to go on a horse show.
I had to just keep, I had to keep reminding myself that I
was there for the connection.
And I over and over and over, and my dear friend Margie, who helped start the
Polyvagal Institute with me, one of the other founders, she said, you know, I,
I've ridden for, with her for 43 years.
I used to show with her and she said, oh my God, I've waited for 40 years for
you to find this horse, you know, and he is put together with tobacco, you know,
with gum, and, you know, and I've had like Hannah variance and for caterers
and, you know, third level dressage.
And, but she's like, he got, he, you got it.
And it's, it's not courage, because courage implies
for me, dominance with him.
It's just, listen, listen,
Rupert Isaacson: be curious.
What I mean by courage though, is the courage to get on the back of
a horse that, you know is likely to buck and access that curiosity.
But you know, what's,
Rebecca Bailey: how is that not courage?
Well, it's the, it's the match of nervous system because think
of Freia, the one that bucks.
Mm-hmm.
Two with the turkeys.
I got no courage with that one.
But my nervous system gets too activated by her for whatever reason where summit
can do the same thing, not quite as big.
And my nervous system knows for some reason how to calm down.
So it's a match of nervous system.
Maybe it's courage.
I don't know.
I, I is
Rupert Isaacson: a match of nervous systems, what we call chemistry,
Rebecca Bailey: maybe.
Yeah, maybe.
Or maybe attunement.
How about that?
That's a better word.
Attunement being really attuned each
Rupert Isaacson: other.
Explain, explain what you mean by attunement.
That's
Rebecca Bailey: interesting.
So attunement goes way back to psychodynamic psychoanalytical stuff
where, you know, your ability to really sense the other person and the
other, it's co-regulation at its best.
Okay.
attunement is what we used to try to teach people.
In the th in graduate schools.
And yet it was often a one-way attunement.
Like you never expected your client to be in tuned with you.
And I always was like, wait a second, I'm in the room too.
How come I'm not allowed to care?
You know?
And so I gave, some of my, and that was the time I was hanging
around with the Grateful Dead.
I was doing my grad school work.
And so I gave them a run for their money.
I'd be like, that makes no sense.
And honestly, Rupert, when I graduated True story, the dean of student pulled
me aside and said, you're one of the few students we haven't ruined.
And you know what I said?
I said, cuz I didn't understand a damn thing.
You people were talking about it.
And it's true.
I didn't understand what they meant with this thing of like, blank screen.
It's like, what?
What is that?
Yeah.
You know, I don't know what that means.
What do you mean blank screen with the client?
I'm in there too.
We're in a relationship.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Yeah.
Really it it dealing with the world as it is, as it comes to you, I guess.
Yes.
We talked about other people's books.
you have books.
Tell us about your books.
I,
Rebecca Bailey: you know, I have one book and I say it's sort of apologetic.
I, I self co, I self-publish Equine Connection and polyvagal principles
that I wrote during, COVID.
It's basically just the beginning of a throw down of the story of this work.
It's not, it's not it yet.
And I'm working on the it.
I also have one Save Kids Smart Parents.
It was as Simon and Schuster published book.
it, it's, it was actually quite good, but it's a little bit hard to find.
And then I also have, the thing I'm really proud of is a
paper with Deb Dana and a Dr.
Davis on Polyvagal in the courtroom looking at about how polyvagal
principles and high conflict divorce, how important it is that everybody,
attorneys and judges all understand the importance of regulation.
And then I have this one I wrote with Porges on Appeasement,
which is, sub published in the British Journal of Traumatology.
So as a dyslexic who rambles a lot, I'm very proud of the academic papers,
although I would rather go get two more crowns without Novocaine than
continue to write the academic papers.
But right now I'm working on another polyvagal paper.
I'm in another polyvagal book.
and I also have a crazy book that I'm thinking that, I won't tell you
what it is until it's done, but I'll give you a hint when we're not on the
Rupert Isaacson: podcast.
I've got one of those too.
do you?
Yeah, yeah.
Which I've been saying.
I'm, I'm gonna finish next year for about the last 15 years.
probably more like 20, but I will finish it.
Rebecca Bailey: But, alright, well, we'll trade and then we'll check in with
each other about it because Okay, good.
I like it.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
And then, so finally, how do people contact you
Rebecca Bailey: through the, polyvagal Equine Institute?
Ww polyvagal equine institute.com, office at Polyvagal Equine Institute?
I think it's also important to know that JC Dugard, who was
abducted at 11 and returned after, gosh, 18 years with two children.
I originally met her when she was deposited literally in my program.
She also wrote a really interesting and yet very activating
book called The Stolen Life.
And the second half of the book is very much about the type of equine
work that we were doing at the time.
she was, you know, people say, oh my gosh, this was your
client and now you're working.
What happened after three years?
She said, I do not want to go forward being known as the
little girl that was abducted.
Can you help me make my story mean something?
So we went into consult for three months and worked it out and, have gone
forward to help create the Polyvagal Equine Institute so that people can
have some of the same experience.
So her book A Stolen Life, is also wonderful.
Margie also has a book called, notes from the Barn, which is really sweet.
You'd really like it.
Rupert too.
So,
Rupert Isaacson: so Jason, A Stolen Life.
Margie McDonald.
Notes.
Notes for the phone.
Rebecca Bailey: Okay.
Yeah.
And Polyvagal Equ Polyvagal Principles.
Equine Connections or Safe Kids.
Smart Parents.
Rupert Isaacson: Polyvagal Principles.
Equine connections.
And safe kids.
Smart parents.
Okay.
They can go on Amazon and find these.
Yep.
Okay.
Yep.
Okay.
Listeners, you have your reading list.
and one more time, give people the URL they might have been driving.
They might need to pull off and write it.
Give us the url, give us your email.
Rebecca Bailey: How can they contact you?
It's ww polyvagal equine institute.com and it's office at Polyvagal Equine Institute.
And if you want something to get directly to me, just say Rebecca or aka a Dr.
B and I will get it.
Super.
Rupert Isaacson: Alright.
All right.
I can't wait to come check it out.
Yeah.
Good.
Yay.
I will be in California.
I'm, I'm, you know, I'm there every, at least once a year, sometimes twice.
so Can I swing
Rebecca Bailey: by you better?
You guys spoke better and, maybe we can get joy back
Rupert Isaacson: out here.
Would love that.
Yeah.
Joy.
Yeah.
For those of you who might have missed Joy O'Neill's, podcast that she did
with us, that she runs Red Barn in Alabama, one of the great unsung
heroes of the equine assisted world.
Check her
Rebecca Bailey: out.
She really is.
You know, Rupert, after my house burned down, my grandmother
was a children's author and I'd only mentioned it once to Joy.
She went on and found every one of my grandmother's books and sent them to me.
Yeah.
Within six weeks of my house burning down, she, we call, we all call her mama Joy.
And when you meet her, you understand.
And she is absolutely, she and her daughter are crazy and crazy amazing.
So they're,
Rupert Isaacson: they're, they're, they're, and you know, as, as Jo Joy
shows up, she's from Alabama, she's very much a southern, but blah, blah, blah.
Oh, I didn't realize she had this whole punk rock background.
And I was like, I love you forever, joy.
You know, it's just like, yeah.
Rebecca Bailey: Oh, a ask her to tell you about who her boyfriends
were in high school too.
It's, it's, there's so many things about her that you'll be driving
down the road and she'll say something and you'll go, what?
So anyways.
All right.
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
Well listen, thank you so, so much.
Rebecca, this has been amazing.
It's been in informative, it's been educational, it's been inspirational.
I look forward to more, if people have, questions, would you come
back on and maybe we could answer?
Rebecca Bailey: Absolutely.
I would love to.
I would absolutely love to.
Rupert Isaacson: So that's my sneaky way of getting you for around two.
I know.
I'd love to.
thank you for joining us.
We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
Join our website, new trails learning.com, to check out our online
courses and live workshops in Horse Boy Method, movement Method, and Athena.
These evidence-based programs have helped children, veterans, and people
dealing with trauma around the world.
We also offer a horse training program and self-care program
for riders on long ride home.com.
These include easy to do online courses and tutorials that
bring you and your horse joy.
For an overview of all shows and programs, go to rupert isaacson.com.
See you on the next show.
And please remember to press, subscribe and share.